A Review on Use of Land Metrics in Land Use and Land Cover

Landscape metrics are techniques that estimate the spatial properties of individual patches, groups of patches, or complete landscape mosaics. These metrics are the tool for evaluating a landscape; it details the structure and arrangement of a land. While the structure of land expresses how extensively the landscape is covered by a certain type of land cover, an arrangement of land represents the spatial arrangement of the land. Landscape metrics can be considered for different categories. Each category contains information about several aspects of the environment. Due to these features, landscape indices can contribute extra statistical information that enhances land cover classification. The emerging number of indices causes new trials for landscape ecologists. Recently, the cause of unpredictable surroundings of Landscape metrics is they do not consider the difference in the ecological response variable when used as a substitute for landscape structure. The following metrics are used frequently in aspects of landscape pattern: area and edge metrics, shape metrics, aggregation metrics and diversity metrics. This survey converged on the development of quantitative methods for evaluating the influence of land-use alters in ecological systems.