Howard E. Woodin ES Colloquium Series

Forest Fragmentation: A Fuzzy Look at a Clear-Cut Problem
Amy Frazier, Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, Oklahoma State University

Forest fragmentation is an on-going threat in forest communities, especially in the Eastern U.S. where the prevailing pattern of dispersed, low intensity development penetrates intact forest, increasing the amount of wildland urban interface (WUI). Most methods to measure forest fragmentation rely on thematic land cover maps, but these maps typically ignore the gradient nature of forests and other land covers. “Fuzzy” methods offer an alternative for modeling land cover as a gradient, but the maps produced by these methods are not compatible with typical tools for measuring fragmentation. This study bridges the gaps between traditional fragmentation metrics and fuzzy maps to better monitor forest fragmentation.