Perceptions of landscape patterns: Do the numbers count?

Human perception and intuition can powerfully influence how we measure and interpret landscape pattern. We compared human perception with more quantitative measures to determine their relative efficacy in arriving at conclusions about landscape pattern. We surveyed 30 professional workshop participants and 38 undergraduate students for their perception of landscape fragmentation before and after calculating a suite of landscape metrics. Participants' perception of fragmentation was most correlated with number of patches, patch density, and patch shape. Most participants retained their original intuitive response after calculating indices. We suggest that a lack of meaningful quantitative expressions for absolute landscape structure will continue to result in a dependence on intuitive human perception for management of landscape pattern.