Pland	Percentage of landscape	Percent	Percentage of area occupied by a given land-cover type within a sampling cell.
Shape	Shape index	None	Measures the total edge or edge density while adjusting for the size of an area for a given land-cover type. “Shape” increases as the patch edges become more irregular and as the length of patch edges increases.
Para	Perimeter-area ratio	None	Ratio of the patch perimeter to area. It measures shape complexity but without standardization to a simple Euclidean shape (e.g. square).
Frac	Fractal Dimension index	None	Shape complexity across a range of spatial scales (patch sizes). It approaches 1 for shapes with very simple perimeters (e.g. square) and approaches 2 for shapes with highly convoluted, plane-filling perimeters.
Clumpy	Clumpiness index	None	Frequency with which different pairs of patch types appear side-by-side within a sampling cell. “Clumpy” equals 0 when the focal patch type is distributed randomly, and approaches 1 when the patch type is maximally aggregated.
Contag	Contagion index	Percent	Inversely related to edge density. When edge density is very low (e.g. when a single class occupies a very large percentage of the landscape), “Contag” is high, and vice versa. “Contag” is affected by both the dispersion and interspersion of patch types.
Pladj	Percentage of like adjacencies	Percent	Measures the degree of aggregation of patch types. Thus, a landscape containing larger patches with simple shapes will contain a higher percentage of like adjacencies than a landscape with smaller patches and more complex shapes. Contrary to “Contag”, “Pladj” measures only dispersion and not interspersion.
Ai	Aggregation index	Percent	Takes into account only the like adjacencies involving the focal class, not adjacencies with other patch types. AI increases as the focal patch type is increasingly aggregated and equals 100 when the patch type is maximally aggregated into a single, compact patch.
Iji	Interspersion & juxtaposition index	Percent	This metric is based on adjacent patches and isolates interspersion or intermixing of patch types. “Iji” approaches 0 when the corresponding patch type is adjacent to only 1 other patch type and the number of patch types increases. “Iji” = 100 when the corresponding patch type is equally adjacent to all other patch types.
Acronym	Metric Name	Units	Description
Sidi	Simpson’s diversity index	None	Measures diversity (heterogeneity) of the landscape. “Sidi” approaches 1 as the number of different patch types increases and the proportional distribution of area among patch types becomes more equitable.
Shdi	Shannon’s diversity index	None	Measures diversity (heterogeneity) of the landscape. “Shdi” increases as the number of different patch types increases and the proportional distribution of area among patch types becomes more equitable. “Shdi” is more sensitive to rare patch types than “Sidi”.