Dear Mr. Zogaris,

In the province of Quebec, Canada, we use visual landscape assessment methods as a tool for ecosystemic planning of the forest. You can find most informations through this link, although most of the literature is only in french : http://www.mffp.gouv.qc.ca/forets/amenagement/amenagement-ecosystemique.jsp 

Hope this will help! 

Dear Mr. Zogaris, we are trying to obtain European funds to test something similar to what you are asking for, using remote sensing or drones. Maybe we could talk about your proposal to feed a common proposal. 

The indicator I´m attaching to this message would be useful for your team. It is written in Spanish, I hope you can translate it

Thank you MIchelle, Pedro, Juan for your important contributions.

I’m not sure whether the comments below are relevant to your inquiry, but the flows of matter and energy within landscapes are of interest.

It is argued that Australian soils are as deficient in certain nutrients as they are because of millions of years of leaching (outflow) without compensating inflow (through glaciation, vulcanicity, massive river deposition). Circulation of nutrients in such landscapes is relatively rapid and as the result of fire.

Some of the farmland and woodland soils eastern England have been impoverished by the removal of timber, crops and animal material from the ecosystem for millennia… into villages - particularly cemeteries, and rubbish accumulations.

It is possible to estimate the flows of matter and energy within landscape – through analysis of their present dynamics and (using historical documents for example) in the historic past.

Some such studies have indicated that sometimes long-term outflows exceed inflows, or the accumulation of nutrients in some isolated part of the system.

Dear Stamatis,

This is a very interesting question and i think that this subject should be more debated. New tools are developed in the field of the seascapes studies. The Mediterranean seagrass Posidonia oceanica forms extensive underwater meadows and appears to be a good matrix to investigate their structure (with side scan sonar images) and then to develop assessment tools.

If you wish you can find more information on this approach in the article attached.

Article Marine space ecology and seagrasses. Does patch type matter ...

Visual assessment is the most important method; using other techniques if one has done, still at least a few visual assessment has to be done

The assessment methods I developed are dynamic and can be situationally altered.  Although I assessed subwatersheds for a fish species, the approach can be used for a variety of species and landscapes.  Please check out:  https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Albert_Smith5

I think some indexes of network connectivity based on landscape ecology approach may be helpful.But it related to your goals  and how you define integrity. If you define integrity in landscape ecology, then indexes of fragmentation will be used to identify the degree of integrity. some of such indexes is useful for visual assessment and i also recommended this article:The ecology of visual landscapes: Exploring the conceptual common ground of visual and ecological landscape indicators,

LInk: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1470160X08001581

I worked in this sometime ago. i found useful at that time these approaches, but there might be important advances in the field

ABELLO R.P., BERNALDEZ F.G.1986. Landscape preference and personality. Landscape and Urban Planning, 13: 19-28.

ABELLO R.P., GONZALEZ BERNALDEZ F., GALIANO E. 1986.Consensus and contrast components in landscape preferences analysis. Environment and Behaviour, 18(2): 155-178

Dear Dr. Zogaris,

I considered this idea after developing a multi-taxa index of biological integrity in Southern California.  It's an issue of scale, both in terms of how you measure and what you measure.  I think it can be done but will ultimately require some kind of empirical basis that links the visual estimate to real world measures of integrity.  Once you have this link established, you're good. 

As a possible example, Tim OConnell, Robert Brooks and others developed one of the larger scale indices I've seen and because it was related mainly back to forest  cover, one could probably link it to remotely sensed data and make predictive, wall to wall maps.  

Dear Jay, I really appreciate your advice and refrences (I'll forward on to my colleagues) - thank you!

There are numerous visual assessment indices. In the US, the BLM has this:

http://www.blm.gov/style/medialib/blm/wo/Information_Resources_Management/policy/ib_attachments/2012.Par.53766.File.dat/IB2012-080_att1.pdf

And this:

http://www.blm.gov/nstc/library/pdf/1734-6rev05.pdf

In South Africa, here's a summary of the tools used for wetlands:

http://www.wrc.org.za/Knowledge%20Hub%20Documents/Research%20Reports/TT%20433-09%20Conservation%20of%20Water%20Ecosystems.pdf

I've uploaded the wet-health tool. For some reason I'm struggling to find them online.

Bob Scholes and Rina Biggs also developed a biodiversity intactness index Attached.

Mark Reed has done a lot of work in Botswana on assessing rangeland health for specific communities, and developed these (one example):

http://www.desire-his.eu/es/descargas/doc_view/134-veld-health-check-a-manual-for-boteti-farmers

For South African aquatic health we use:

McMillan P. 1998. An Integrated Habitat Assessment System (IHAS v2) for the Rapid Biological Assessment of Rivers and Streams. (CSIR research project. Number ENV-P-I 98132). Water resources management programme, CSIR.

Unfortunately I can't find a pdf of this one. Let me know if you're interested and I'll get a copy to you from a friend of mine.

Also this:

http://www.csir.co.za/rhp/sass.html

The California Native Plant Society has developed this:

http://www.cnps.org/cnps/vegetation/protocol.php

And the Australian Landscape Function Analysis is used widely in Australia and South Africa. Attached

Article A biodiversity intactness index

Article Participatory Rangeland Monitoring and Management in the Kal...

Article Landscape Function Analysis: Procedures for Monitoring and A...

In addition to that work in Botswana more recently I've been using the Greenhouse Gas Emissions Site Type approach to develop field based protocols for assessing the carbon dynamics of a peatland landscapes from changes in vegetation. These surveys are quite detailed but I'm currently trying to work out whether the vegetation changes can be detected via remote sensing, to provide a landscape scale visual assessment metric. It might be worth investigating what you can get from aerial photos of your sites?

Mark, have you got some links to the approach you're using? I'm interested.