A measure for spatial heterogeneity of vegetation in the Center of Inner Mongolia

This study surveyed and analyzed the vegetation heterogeneity in the Center of Inner Mongolia (CIM) by a new method based on the beta-binomial distribution for each kind of vegetation. As many as 190 large quadrats of 5 mm x S mm (representing an area of 50 km × 50 km) (referred to as L-quadrats hereafter) were extracted from about an area of 475,000 km2. Each L-quadrat was divided into four small quadrats (S-quadrat) of 2.5 mm x 2.5 mm (equivalent to 25 km x 25 km) and the frequency of occurrence of each type of vegetation was recorded in each small quadrate. The weighted average heterogeneity from all of the vegetations composing a landscape provides a measure at landscape level to determine the spatial intricateness of landscape composition. Our results indicated that each vegetation has its own distribution pattern and the degree of heterogeneity is different from one kind of vegetation to the other. The results proved that the beta-binomial distribution can be very useful for analyzing vegetation landscapes.