vLATE Extension für ArcGIS – vektorbasiertes Tool zur quantitativen Landschaftsstrukturanalyse

V-LATE (vector-based landscape analysis tools extension) provide a selected set of the most common metrics to cover basic ecological and structure-related investigations. They are organized according to the main aspects of structural pattern analysis and therefore employ metrics of seven different categories (area-, form-, interior-, edge-, proximity-, diversity- and subdivision analysis, see section 5 for further explanation). These groups of metrics in general describe form, configuration, and composition of the landscape pattern and are considered to cover principal aspects of structural landscape assessment of crucial ecological meaningfulness. The V-LATE plug-in is an extension for the ArcGIS 8.x / ArcGIS 9.x / ArcGIS 10.x environment. [Additionally the V-LATE plug-in contains an algorithm to calculate a 'dissolve-IDs' for adjacent polygons of the same class. This fixes a problem in ESRI's GeoprocessingWizard, which allows only a dissolve over whole classes. This results in multipart shapefiles which are not suitable for further calculations. After calculating the dissolve-ID, the user can use the GeoprocessingWizard of ArcMap to exclusively dissolve the adjacent polygons of the same class Note: This problem has been solved in the ArcGIS 9 release] A direct link for launching the IDEFIX database provides background information for the user. Note that V-LATE also offers a short help file, which briefly describes the implemented metrics.