Journal
HELIYON
Volume 7, Issue 7, Pages -Publisher
CELL PRESS
DOI: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2021.e07642
Keywords
Landscape pattern; Habitat fragmentation; Ecological restoration
Categories
Funding
- Addis Ababa University
- Ministry of Science and Higher Education, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Ask authors/readers for more resources
The study reveals a deteriorating landscape ecological structure and increasing habitat fragmentation in the Bale mountains national park over time, particularly in terms of the decreasing areas of grassland and forestland.
The changes of natural habitat structure and function due to human interference is hastening worldwide, and it is compulsory to preserve biological resources in a protected system. This study aims to measure the landscape ecological structure and the extent of habitat fragmentation in the Bale mountains national park. The land use/ land cover change was determined by interpreting the 1985, 1995, 2005 and 2017 Landsat images with ArcGIS 10.3, and the selected landscape structural metrics was analyzed using FRAGSTATS 4.2.1. All land cover classes showed a declining trend, except the farmland, and grassland depicted the highest area reduction. From 1985 to 2017 grassland, Erica, forestland, and afro-alpine were decreased by 9.36 %, 0.26 %, 0.06 %, and 0.01 %, respectively. Whereas, farmland was increased by 43.67 %. The study area was characterized as progressively fragmented since it was signified by the escalated value of patch number (40.22 %), area-weighted mean shape index (18.84 %), and edge density (22.27 %) and a declined value of mean patch size (28.68 %) and core area (10.60 %) over the study period. Considering this result, there was a high loss in area available for core dependent species, particularly for Mountain nyala in the grasslands and woodlands, Ethiopian wolf in afro-alpine regions, and Bale monkey in the bamboo forest. Both forestland and grassland need a conservation priority since these habitats were the most fragmented and habitat lost area.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available