The impact of scale effects on the relationships between urbanization and landscape metrics

The relationships between urbanization and landscape metrics have been extensively documented. Few studies, however, have examined whether such relationships are affected by scale effects. This study aims to (1) study the variations in the relationships among different selected transects; and (2) study the impacts of scale effects on landscape diversity and other landscape metrics in an entire area. To reach such goals, land uses and land covers in the Shunyi District of Beijing were classified based on Landsat images, then the landscape metrics were calculated both at the regional scale and at four transect scales using Fragstats and patch analysis. The results show that transect selection and spatial scales did have some impacts on the relationships between the landscape metrics and urbanization. The relationships between urbanization and the landscape metrics differed across different scales, as well as different transects. Hence, the threshold of scale should be carefully considered since it is site-dependent. A suitable scale found in a particular area may not be suitable for another area. These results suggest that the proper selection of scales and transects is crucial to ensure the quality of ecological urbanization assessments.