Landscape indices and landuse - tools for landscape menagement

Describing the environment with quantitative data is a new requirement in the environment related sciences which is the consequence of the developing computerbased methods. New requirements with new tools generated quick development in the measuring level: parameters turned to be measurable in several subjects. Landscape ecology as a young science has its own methods from the beginnings, but the quantified landscape geometry indices appeared only in the 1980s. Exploration of the landscape structure made necessary to elaborate those methods which were applicable to characterize the patches, corridors and the matrix of the landscapes. Nowadays we can find several landscape indices to quantify the geometry of landscape elements in patch and landscape level, but they are not used in the practice of the landscape management. It is shown in this paper that these landscape indices what novelty can mean in a sample area of Northern Hungary and what can be the practical side of their the usage. FRAGSTATS software was used to calculate landscape metrics. Principal component analysis was applied to reduce redundancy of indices and, based on the results, some of them was selected. Land use types and microregions were used as dependent variables in a discriminant function analysis. Both of them were identifiable with this method in several cases. Landscapes were clustered based on the characteristics of the landscape indices.