Forest Fragmentation

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The forest fragmentation model uses the land cover data from Connecticut’s Changing Landscape to characterize the degree to which our forests have become carved up by developed landscapes, especially roads. If you look at our land cover maps, or better yet our animations, your eyes can pick out the general pattern of how the green forested areas of your town or watershed have been changed by development – but we want to be able to describe those patterns objectively, and in some detail. The forest fragmentation model allows us to do this. It looks at each individual forested “pixel” and notes its relationship to the other pixels around it. By doing this for the entire state (nearly 14 million pixels!), it classifies all forested land into one of five types: interior (core) forest, perforated forest, edge forest, transitional forest and patch forest. This will help us to gain more insight into the impacts of development patterns on our forest and related wildlife resources.

When most people look at Connecticut's forest cover they see a lot of green.	But what they don't see is that much of our forested areas are compromised by proximity to non-forested land.
1,886,246 acres of forest = 59.3% of CT	576,764 acres interior forest = 18.1% of CT 1,309,482 acres fragmented forest = 41.2% of CT 18.1% + 41.2% = 59.3%

Using the forest fragmentation model we can begin to better quantify the impacts of our land use decisions on Connecticut's forests.