Landscape Ecology: Quantifying Spatial Information the Hard Way Using Microsft Excel ™

 

Tested Studies in Laboratory Teaching, 2012, Volume 33

Timothy Menzel

Abstract

This exercise teaches the basics of landscape ecology to upper level undergraduate biology students. The students are given satellite images and are asked to create thematic maps showing forest and non-forest areas in Microsoft ExcelTM. Those maps are then used to generate metrics for landscape composition, configuration, and connectivity. The metrics from all students are combined and treated as replicates in a landscape level analysis. In this analysis, the relationships between those metrics are explored using simple linear regressions.

Keywords:  landscape ecology, fractionation, Microsoft Excel

New Mexico State University (2011)