Group

Abbreviation

Metric

Unit

Observation

Formula

Area

CA

Total (Class) area

Km²

Sum the patches in all class areas or the fragments of native vegetation present in the area.

Density and size

NUMP

Number of patches

Unit

Total number of patches in the vegetation class

MPS

Mean patch size

Km²

Sum of the total size of all patches divided by patch number

PSSD

Patch size standard deviation

Km²

Distribution of variance of patch size

Edge

ED

Edge density

m・ha⁻¹

Quantity of length of edge (TE)relative to total area (CA)

Shape

MSI

Mean shape index

adimensional

Measures the complexity of patch form. Is equal to 1 when all the patches are squares and increases with the growth of irregularity in the form of the patch

Connectivity

MNN

Mean distance to nearest neighbor

meters

The mean nearest neighbor Euclidian distance between closest patches

CONN

Connectivity

adimensional

Number of functional connections between all fragments over a determined distance, divided by the total number of possible connections between these fragments

Diversity index

SDI

Shannons diversity index

adimensional

Estimate of the relative abundance and variability of the different types of vegetation