Complementary methods to assess forest landscape structure: Shannon's entropy and fractal dimension of remotely sensed imagery

Landscape structure, interpreted as indicator of functional processes, has become a main attribute of multiresource forest inventories, enhancing its value with respect to society needs. This approach implies effective use of earth observation techniques and geographic information systems, enabling a global view of the inventoried landscape mosaics. The objective of this paper is to discuss two complementarily targeted approaches to assess forest landscape structure and complexity: a method based on information theory as introduced by Shannon, and one based on the estimation of local fractal dimension. Both methods together provide an objective assessment of landscape structure at the given resolution.