Environmental indicators are a key element to describe environmental changes and pressure. Environmental indicators provide information that is considered to be critical to understanding the development of environmental problems.

Indicators can be used to express the condition of complex forest systems, condensing the complex spatial configuration of objects into a manageable and understandable message.

The Figure schematically illustrates which landscape configurations is resulting in high and low index values regarding the 7 major thematic groups. One index is provided for each of these aspects.

Schematic examples for different configurations of forested landscapes resulting in low and high spatial index values:

Low Value   High Value
	Area Metrics
	Patch Density Metrics
	Edge Metrics
	Shape Metrics
	Core Area Metrics
	Nearest Neighbour Metrics
	Diversity Metrics

For detailed specifications, see the Product Sheet below.