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June 24, 2005
Tools for landscape and pattern analysis
Fragstats
I experimented with the free version, which needs a raster file as input. I used Spatial Analyst to convert the vector file back into a raster, however, that does obviously introduce an additional error, and I have not yet tricked fragstat into accepting the raster format I produced. The commercial version (Fragstats*arc) is tailored to work with ArcGIS, but it is outrageously expensive (about $1000), and Branner does not have that software available.
PatchAnalyst
This tool is an extension to the ArcView GIS. However, it relies on the old directory structure of ArcGIS8 to install the extensions into an \Ext32 directory. This is obsolete in ArcGIS9. The full edition requires the Spatial Analyst extension, but that's not a problem for Stanford users. I have not found an argGIS9 version yet.
V-LATE
I came across another extension for landscape analysis, V-LATE, which is free, does work with ArGIS9 and uses vectors (shapefiles).
http://www.geo.sbg.ac.at/larg/vlate.htm
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And of course, GRASS has its own program (r.le) to calculate a variety of common quantitative measures of landscape structure.
Posted by cengel at June 24, 2005 02:45 PM