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Introduction: This chapter investigates the effects of landscape patchiness on levels of biodiversity and endemism in a forested reserve that contains farms and settlements within its boundaries. Throughout, the terms <i>fragmentation</i> and <i>patchiness</i> refer to the same thing, namely, clearings in a forested setting, human influenced or not. Tree falls and inhospitable soils or slopes represent nonanthropogenic sources of patchiness in the forest (Forman and Godron 1986). Essentially, therefore, this chapter deals with nonforest patches or fragments in a forested landscape. The results of this study are particularly relevant to habitat fragmentation resulting from agricultural activity on the borders and within state forest reserves. Despite national laws that make human use of state forests in the Philippines illegal, centuries of agricultural activities in the region will not be easily halted. Therefore, it is prudent to consider the best ways to plan and manage forest reserves so as to maximize biodiversity conservation while including the activities of resident settlers. The findings of this study suggest that if farmersÂ’ clearing can be distributed in sparse, discontiguous, and regularly shaped patches, the negative effects of habitat fragmentation can be ameliorated. The chapter begins by reviewing the only existing fragmentation index and explaining its inadequacy for this investigation. It then proceeds to the development of a new fragmentation index and the methods involved in deriving it from maps and remotely sensed data using geographic information systems (GIS) and image-processing systems. Finally, the results are presented of regression analyses carried out to examine the relationship between this index, and the biodiversity indices and endemicity ratios generated in other studies conducted in the Mount Makiling Forest Reserve in the Philippines (see Sajise and Ticsay-Ruscoe 1997
Gruezo 1997
Gonzalez and Dans 1997
Gruezo and Gonzalez 1997
Francisco 1997).
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