Patterns of vegetation structural diversity across heterogeneous landscapes in southwestern Nova Scotia

Abstract

Forest edges, including transitional areas between forest and non-forest areas, outline the overall structure of the landscape. To assess and quantify patterns of structural diversity across natural and harvested landscapes in southwestern Nova Scotia, I used field-based structural diversity metrics and UAV imagery along two 1250 m transects to examine different aspects of the pattern of structural diversity across transitions in forested landscapes. For traditional field metrics, tree structural diversity had more success in determining transitions than functional plant group diversity, as tree structural diversity detected all edge types compared to just anthropogenic edges when using functional plant group diversity. For photogrammetrically derived metrics, no metric detected transitions at all edges and overall UAV metrics were incompatible with field sampling. Future studies should examine the compatibility of LiDAR and structural diversity metrics.