Zoë Rosanagh Slattery

Building on existing literature, this study aims to answer the questions of whether specific drivers of forest fragmentation cause particular fragmentation characteristics, andhow these characteristics can be linked to their effects on forest-dwelling species.

This research uses remote imaging from NASA’s Landsat global satellite program toexamine the changing patterns of forests. It focuses on areas which have undergonea high level of a specific fragmentation driver, in particular either agricultural expansion or commodity-driven deforestation. Seven municipalities in the states of Rondôniaand Mato Grosso in Brazil are selected as case study areas. Land cover maps of eachmunicipality are created using the Geographical Information System software ‘ArcGIS’Spatial Analyst extension. The resulting categorical maps are input into ‘Fragstats’fragmentation software to calculate quantifiable fragmentation metrics for each municipality. These fragmentation metrics can be grouped by the fields of area, edge, corearea, shape complexity, aggregation, and contrast of forest patches within each municipality. In municipalities which experienced the same fragmentation driver, correlationbetween changes in fragmentation characteristics is examined. To determine the effectsthat these characteristics are likely to cause, this study uses a literature review to determine how species traits affect their responses to forest fragmentation. Certain traitssuch as size and habitat specialisation can be used to predict a species’ vulnerability tothe loss of habitat and changing conditions caused by forest fragmentation.

Results indicate that, in areas that underwent agricultural expansion, the remaining forest patches became more complex in shape with longer edges and lost a large amount ofcore area.  This negatively affects species which are either highly dispersive or specialistto core forest habitat. In areas that underwent commodity-driven deforestation, it wasmore likely that forest patches would become less aggregated and create disjunct coreareas. This negatively affects smaller, sedentary animals which do not naturally travellong distances. This information will prove useful for forest managers, particularly inthe case study municipalities examined in this thesis, in deciding which species requirefurther protection measures. Further research is needed to validate whether the fragmentation characteristics change similarly for the specific drivers studied here in otherlocations, and for other drivers such as forest fires.