Landscape metrics as a tool for analysis of urban pedodiversity

Landscape metrics play an important role in pedodiversity studies. Despite considerable research on pedodiversity, there is a lack of standardised methods for assessing the degree of soil cover diversity, especially in the urban area. Hence, in this work, we propose a new approach for spatial analyses of the urban soils using landscape metrics. The aim of the study was to develop a qualitative-quantitative landscape-metrics-based method for the pedodiversity measurement and the degree of soils' transformation. The research included: selection of input data (cartographic materials), data digitisation, development of an urban soil map and a soil transformation map, creation of a hexagonal grid within the city's administrative boundaries, calculation of eight landscape metrics and their statistical selection, and finally, development of the maps based on original pedodiversity index. Despite the homogeneous initial soil cover of the city, the present, human-transformed soil cover is relatively heterogeneous by urban soil complexes and the degree of soil transformation. The developed method allows areas of greatest landscape fragmentation to be identified, and thereby to precisely indicate the areas of the most strongly human-transformed soils and fertile soil losses, which can support urban spatial planning and landscape design.