Analysing Landscape Fragmentation and Classifying Threats for Habitats of Community Interest in the “Iron Gates” Natural Park (Romania)

Our study aims at evaluating the ecological impact of landscape fragmentation, identifying, and classifying the threats affecting habitats of community interest in the “Iron Gates” Natural Park. We used landscape metrics for assessing the fragmentation process, results expressing decreases in the values of three metrics (MPS, ED, SDI) and increases for two metrics (NumP and IJI). We observed an insignificant increase in landscape fragmentation related to a reduced decrease of its landscape diversity for the 1990-2006 timeframe. We classified the main anthropic threats to habitats of community interest in three main categories: diversification and densification of buildings and transportation infrastructures, land use and industrial activities.