Illustration of the behaviour of five landscape metrics in the phases of shrinkage and attrition of the remaining parcels of open landscape due to the growth of an urban area

First row: change of the landscape over time (black lines = highways, black area = residential or commercial area; size of
the landscape: 4 km × 4 km = 16 km2). Only the effective mesh size behaves in a suitable way (bottom diagram). APS and
n both exhibit a jump in their values (even though the process in the landscape is continuous); DTL and nUDA100 do not
respond to the increase in fragmentation. (meff = effective mesh size, n = number of patches, APS = average patch size,
nUDA100 = number of large undissected low-traffic areas > 100 km2, DTL = density of transportation lines).