Summary
Landscape metrics are one of the current topics in geography. Their application is discussed in various research fields focused on cities and urbanization processes, road networks or rivers. Although these metrics were originally designed for ecology, they are nowadays used in diverse scientific fields. Shape metrics are generally considered as a group of landscape metrics for evaluation of shape properties of patches. Another group of metrics describing the characteristics of a shape is fractal dimension. Various types of basic shape metrics were constructed to describe area, perimeter of a patch, as well as some advanced metrics, such as distances between interior points of a patch or distances between interior points and the centroid. The application of these metrics depends primarily on the purpose of the research and on the particular patch type which is studied. The choice of a shape metric could rapidly influence the results and their final interpretation. From this reason, we have to carefully choose the appropriate metrics.
The selected shape metrics were applied on the area of interest covering Morava basin and Dyje basin in the south-eastern part of the Czech Republic. Two different types of patches were used for two case studies in the second part of the thesis. The third order river basins of both rivers, as well as river basins defined by the location of water measuring stations were used in these two case studies. For the purpose of the case studies, 17 third order basins and 27 smaller basins were chosen. The number of the basins was influenced by the availability of runoff data for the basins located partly behind the borderline of the Czech Republic.
The main aim of this thesis was the application of selected shape metrics for studying the shape of river basins and the shape of river networks. Many different shape metrics were calculated for third order river basins and for river basins based on location of water measuring stations in the area of interest. Various software, applications and extensions were used for shape metrics calculation (Patch Analyst, V-LATE, FRACTALYSE, etc.). The thesis is also focused on the application of fractal dimension in studying the shape properties of river basins and rivers. Software FRACTALYSE and Fractal Analysis System were used for calculation of fractal dimension metrics. Values of fractal dimension were estimated by two different methods – box counting and radius mass. The later method is also implemented in V- LATE software.
Values of shape metrics were finally compared with river runoff data, specifically with the long-term average specific runoff and the average annual runoff volume. Dependence between these variables was evaluated by the correlation analysis, including both parametric and non-parametric methods (Pearson and Spearman correlation).
One of the main results of the thesis is the research on possibilities of calculation of shape metrics and fractal dimension of river basins and networks. These properties were subsequently compared with runoff data. To summarize the findings of the thesis, the shape metrics could be considered as an appropriate way of evaluation of shape of river basins. However, the interpretation of these metrics is a complicated process which is hugely dependent on their correct application. Eventually, there is some relation between the metrics and river runoff data. Correlation analysis showed some low or moderate relations between the data.