Figure 2 | Scientific Reports

Figure 2

From: Five main phases of landscape degradation revealed by a dynamic mesoscale model analysing the splitting, shrinking, and disappearing of habitat patches

Figure 2

Examples of elementary local events affecting habitat patches on a hexagonal lattice. Non-habitat sites are represented by white hexagons, while habitat sites are represented by grey hexagons. In each row, the hexagon with the thick black outline or black filling, respectively, is the focal one that changes from right to left or from left to right. The following descriptions refer to the elementary events occurring from left to right. (a) The loss of the focal habitat site causes the loss of the entire habitat patch, which consisted of a single site only. (b) The loss of the focal habitat site from the perimeter of a habitat patch decreases the size of that patch. (c) The loss of the focal habitat site from a bottleneck of a habitat patch results in the splitting of that patch; in the shown example, the patch splits into two smaller patches (splitting into three smaller patches is possible for other patch configurations).

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