Geography

Title

Measuring the temporal instability of land change using the Flow matrix

Document Type

Article

Abstract

This article introduces the Flow matrix, which expresses the sizes of transitions among categories between two time points. We use the Flow matrix to create a metric R that measures the instability of annual change among time intervals that partition the time extent. Specifically, R is the proportion of change that would need to be reallocated to different time interval(s) to achieve uniform change during the time extent. This article computes R for 10 Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) sites and for seven case studies from published land change data. Of the 10 LTER sites analyzed, the Andrews site in Oregon had the highest R value (37.1% of change), while the Luquillo site in Puerto Rico had the lowest (1.7% of change). We analyze the mathematical behavior of R, especially with respect to how the partitioning of the time extent into intervals can influence R. © 2013 Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.

Publication Title

International Journal of Geographical Information Science

Publication Date

9-1-2013

Volume

27

Issue

9

First Page

1696

Last Page

1716

ISSN

1365-8816

DOI

10.1080/13658816.2013.792344

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