Shannon entropy as a peri-urban landscape metric: concentration of anthropogenic land cover element

ABSTRACT

Spatial concentration and quantitative spatial density of anthropogenic elements were assessed. The authors used original parameters of standing and progressive anthropogenic pressures in individual hexagons in a grid based on a land cover database and the current population structure. The calculated values of relative entropies for both parameters were similar. The relative entropy based on both pressures for the whole area was high (0.89). In peri-urban zones it was 50% less and in cities about 80% greater. A juxtaposition of standing and progressive pressure values revealed a trend towards a slight decrease in the values.

KEYWORDS:

• Land cover
• concentration indices
• spatial entropy
• progressive anthropogenic pressure
• standing anthropogenic pressure

Acknowledgements

The authors would also like to express their gratitude to two anonymous reviewers for their thorough work with the manuscript and for providing constructive and insightful comments on this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Republic of Poland [Projects No. DS 3371/KGPiAK/2017] and The Dean’s scholarship granted for scientific research [Fun Dydakt/W301/KGPiAK/2017].