Department of Renewable Resources, University of Alberta, 751 GSB 9007 - 116 St NW, Edmonton, AB, T6G 2H1, Canada.
University of Alberta, 701 General Services Building 9007 - 116 St NW, Edmonton, ABAB, T6G 2H1, Canada.
Ambio. 2021 May;50(5):1089-1100. doi: 10.1007/s13280-020-01434-5. Epub 2020 Dec 1.
Assessments of large-scale changes in habitat are a priority for management and conservation. Traditional approaches use land use and land cover data (LULC) that focus mostly on "structural" properties of landscapes, rather than "functional" properties related to specific ecological processes. Here, we contend that designing functional analyses of LULC can provide important and complementary information to traditional, structural analyses. We substantiate this perspective with an example of functional changes in habitat due to industrial anthropogenic footprints in Alberta's boreal forest, where there has been little overall forest loss (~ 6% structural change), but high levels of functional change (up to 93% functional change) for species' habitat, biodiversity, and wildfire ignition. We discuss the methods needed to achieve functional LULC analyses, when they are most appropriate to add to structural assessments, and conclude by providing recommendations for analyses of LULC in a future of increasingly high-resolution, dynamic remote sensing data.
评估生境的大规模变化是管理和保护的重点。传统方法使用土地利用和土地覆盖数据（LULC），这些数据主要侧重于景观的“结构性”特性，而不是与特定生态过程相关的“功能性”特性。在这里，我们认为设计 LULC 的功能分析可以为传统的结构性分析提供重要的补充信息。我们用艾伯塔省北方森林中由于工业人为足迹导致的生境功能变化的例子来证明这一观点，在那里，整体森林损失很少（结构变化约 6%），但物种生境、生物多样性和野火点火的功能变化水平很高（高达 93%的功能变化）。我们讨论了实现功能 LULC 分析所需的方法，以及在何时最适合将其添加到结构评估中，并最后提供了在未来高分辨率、动态遥感数据中进行 LULC 分析的建议。
