Landscape fragmentation in Romania's Southern Carpathians: Testing a European assessment with local data

Landscape fragmentation is one of the consequences of increased socio-economic pressure facing many regions of the world today. The European Environment Agency published an assessment of fragmentation in 2011 on the scale of the entire continent, based on the effective mesh size. In this report, Romania is mentioned as an interesting case, and it is hypothesized that the true level of fragmentation was underestimated. The aim of the present study is to investigate this hypothesis. We chose Romania's Southern Carpathians as a case study, digitized the roads from orthophoto maps and calculated the effective mesh size. Results support the hypothesis formulated in the EEA report. Specifically, our results indicated an effective mesh size of approximately 50 km2, which is comparable to other Eastern European countries, whereas the EEA reported an effective mesh size of approximately 1700 km2, which is comparable to the values in Scandinavian countries. To our knowledge, this is the first time that hypotheses stated in an EEA report have been tested against local data. The analyses demonstrate the potential of local data to refine analyses realized at a European level. Because our study area faces increased pressure from local roads for forestry and recreation, accurate fragmentation results are crucial. Our results may help planners to ensure that road development is sustainable and biodiversity conserved.