4 Conclusions

The landscape metrics is one of the hot topics of modern landscape ecological research. However, there is a decreasing trend since 2005 of the papers published in this particular field in high-quality international scientific journals. It indicates that researchers and also practitioners have begun to use pattern metrics more often, skipping correlating ones and choosing only the most informative metrics that truly indicate some relationships between patterns and processes. Yet new metrics are being developed and this fact indicates that there are still some aspects of landscape pattern that existing metrics do not cover or there are problems with scale, interpretability etc. Nevertheless, one should not underestimate the role of landscape metrics in determining the relations between landscape pattern and process.

The majority of papers using landscape metrics/indices/indexes are dedicated to biodiversity and habitat analysis. Also, many articles analyze the relationship of landscape metrics with the evaluation of landscape pattern and changes therein. On the other hand, there are very few articles related to social aspects and landscape perception and therefore one large potential research field is uncovered. Likewise, a lot of research is needed in order to determine landscape metrics useful for landscape management and planning including specifying significant values and ranges of landscape metrics depending on the planning or management purpose.