Shannons's entropy for measuring urban sprawl using Fragstats and/or GIS

2709
0
07-30-2012 08:26 AM
AntoniosPavlou
New Contributor
hello, and thanks for the tips.
May I ask something as well as I am new to Fragstats? I want to calculate Shannon's entropy to measure the urban sprawl. However,I am not sure whether I should import the classified image that contains all of my classes or if I should just use a binary image of urban and non-urban area. Also what happens if a portion of the image was primarily clipped out based on a shapefile so that the image is not a perfect square? basically I think this part should be set as background (via tools> class properties) instead of being enabled ; do I have to include this class? I am asking because I have try this in both ways and has a significant impact on the SHDI.
Also, I've read that Shannon's entropy ranges between 0-1; some other articles refer to values above one. What is the range of it?

Finally, is it possible to measure this index directly using GIS? If so can you briefly explain me how?
0 Kudos
0 Replies