Forest Fragmentation & Edge-Effect Simulator

Logging Pattern

Clearing intensity per cut 20%

Habitat Composition

Core 100%Edge 0%

Forest Metrics

Forest cover

100%

Fragments

Largest patch

784

Est. core species

How it works

The landscape is a grid of trees. Logging removes cells according to a chosen spatial pattern -- scattered (random single-tree removal), clear-cut (an advancing straight-line front), or patches (growing clusters around a few logging sites). The remaining forest is analysed as connected fragments using a flood-fill over 4-connected neighbours.

Every remaining forest cell is classified as edge (touching a cleared cell or the map boundary) or core (fully surrounded by forest). Many forest-interior species cannot persist near an edge because of wind, light and predator exposure, so only core area is treated as usable habitat.

Species-area law:  S = c * A^z   (0 < z < 1, here c=5, z=0.25)
Applied to core (interior) habitat area only, not total forest area.

Two landscapes with equal total forest cover can host very different numbers of species: a clear-cut front leaves one large residual block with a high core:edge ratio, while a scattered or patchy cut leaves many small slivers that are almost all edge.
Because S grows sub-linearly with area (z < 1), splitting the same core area into more, smaller fragments also lowers the single-largest-patch component of richness -- the classic "single large or several small" (SLOSS) trade-off in conservation biology.
Let Regrow reverses the most recently logged cells, showing that a landscape can recover cover long before it recovers the same core-species estimate.

Core forest Edge forest Cleared land

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