Landscape Fragmentation Analysis (version 2)

Author: Jason Parent (jason.parent@uconn.edu)

Date: May 6, 2009

The purpose of the Landscape Fragmentation Tool is to map the types of fragmentation
present in a land cover type of interest (i.e. forest). Fragmentation type is determined by
proximity to fragmenting features such as development.

The Landscape Fragmentation Tool v2 is based on a study by Vogt et al. (2007) and is
intended to replace the previous version of the tool (LFT v1.0).

The tool was designed to work on ArcGIS 9.3 and may not work on earlier versions of
ArcGIS. There are two versions of LFT v2 available – one requires the Spatial Analyst
extension, the other does not. The Spatial Analyst version has better performance for
study areas larger than the state of Connecticut. For smaller study areas, the non-Spatial
Analyst version performs faster.

Before you can run the LFT tool in ArcGIS, you will need to load the script’s toolbox
into ArcToolbox.

Loading the Landscape Fragmentation Analysis toolbox into ArcToolbox:

The download from the Center for Land use Education and Research site contains a
folder that contains all the elements needed to run LFT v2. The contents of this folder
should not be altered or the tool may not work. The folder contains a file called
Landscape Fragmentation Analysis.tbx – this file is the toolbox which you will need to
load into ArcToolbox.
To load the toolbox into ArcToolbox:
1) Start ArcMap and open ArcToolbox .
2) In ArcToolbox, right-click on ArcToolbox
3) Click on Add Toolbox, navigate to the Landscape Fragmentation Analysis.tbx,
and click Open
4) Click the plus symbol to the left of the Landscape Fragmentation Analysis
toolbox to expand it. The toolbox will contain the Landscape Fragmentation Tool.
5) Double-click on the tool to run it.

The Landscape Fragmentation Tool contains documentation on how to use it. To view the
documentation, double-click on the script to open the dialog window. The help column to
the right will provide general information about the tool as well as specific information
for each parameter when you click in the parameter input box. For further information,
click on the Tool Help button at the bottom of the Help column. This will open up an
html page containing further documentation for the tool.

Acknowledgements:
This tool was developed with the support of the Center for Land use Education and
Research (www.clear.uconn.edu), and the Department of Natural Resources and the
Environment at the University of Connecticut (http://www.nrme.uconn.edu/).