Ecological landscape analysis: A GIS-based tool for defining natural landscape units

This study presents the development of a GIS-based tool for delineating natural landscape units. The Ecological Landscape Analysis System (ELAS) is designed to model vector-based ecologically-defined data sets into landscape regions. The system allows for much more flexible and consistent (unbiased) definitions of the landscape that can: be based on specific parameters as defined by the user, take advantage of the data that is available or is of interest; be directed by expert knowledge of the natural environment; be calculated relatively easily; and be carried out at various spatial scales.; Biophysical data sets (at the systems, districts, and regions levels) from the Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources have been used to derive and test regionalization results. Three testing procedures have been conducted. These tests have focused on illustrating the sensitivity of the input parameters, demonstrating the effectiveness of the model employed, and emulating existing regions. ELAS has been shown to be a flexible system with responsive parameters. The regionalization process employed has been shown to be far more effective than a random consolidation of neighbouring landscape units, and existing manually-defined regions have been closely matched by ELAS-generated regions which demonstrates the ability of the system to perform as well as manually-based efforts. However, actual expert-defined regions have yet to be derived and tested against field collected data. Examples illustrating how ELAS can be used and recommendations for improvements to the system have been provided.