In our central European man-made landscape more and more habitats become destroyed or fragmented because of the increasing anthropogenic need of available land. Roads, residential, and industrial areas separate formerly connected habitats into small remnants, thus creating small subpopulations. Especially stenotopic species with low dispersal power are endangered because exchange of specimen between different habitat patches is reduced or entirely inhibited. Methods for the quantification of fragmentation are necessary to develop management and species-specific conservation plans for habitat networks. In this project we investigate the structure of the German woodlands by calculating landscape metrics and study the impacts of fragmentation on different FFH-species' occurrences. Indices which significantly quantify the fragmentation of woodlands are identified by using a simulation model of neutral landscapes. ATKIS2008-data are used for the calculation of the selected landscape metrics. Topographic maps (TK25) serve as the interface between determinated fragmentation of forest and habitat modelling. A niche model of different species is calculated to demonstrate the impacts of woodland fragmentation on different woodland species (e.g. wild cat (Felis sylvestris), barbastelle bat (Barbastella barbastellus), stag beetle (Lucanus cervus), and black stork (Ciconia nigra).
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