Analysis and evaluation of landscape health in the N.W. part of the Mygdonia Basin

The concept of landscape health can be applied in the Mediterranean natural ecosystems which obtained their structure after the longterm effect of human and physical factors. The main characteristic of these ecosystems is the Mediterranean climate, which have relatively long dry seasons due to unequal distribution in time and space of the precipitation. For the observation and evaluation of landscape health it is essential to estimate the values of a number of landscape indicators which are sensitive to the environmental changes, focus in the risk of diminution and relate to the function of the ecosystems. As a study area it was selected the northwest part of the basin of Mygdonia. The land use types and their distribution have derived from a Landsat 7 image of 2001 and the landscape indicators derived from the ArcView 3.2a software The analysis of the landscape indicators was made both in physiographic (three basins) and management level (five communities). The research focused in three subasins. The classification of the three subasins based on the Shannon’s diversity index and Shannon’s evenness index resulted that subasin in which the land types are normally distributed has good landscape health, the subasin which is dominated by shrublands has bad to fair landscape health and the subasin with the intermediate condition has fair landscape health.