Investigating Landscape Fragmentation in Suburban Area Using Remote Sensing and Fragstats: A Case Study of Shanghai

This paper investigates the landscape fragmentation of several suburban areas (town level) in Shanghai Municipality of China, by using remote sensing and Fragstats. Totally five representative suburban towns, i.e. Gucun, Huangdu, Malu, Sidong, and Jinqiao, were selected as the study areas, which were compared with each other considering the different landscape fragmentation and pattern. Two Landsat TM images acquired in 2001 and 2005 were used to generate land cover data, hence to compute the landscape metrics of fragmentation. The landscape metrics used in this study are modified indexes of the original indexes included in Fragstats. This research demonstrates that the characteristics of landscape fragmentation are very different along the corridors of suburban development and urban expansion of Shanghai.