Characterizing green infrastructures multi-scale spatial configuration to better understand their ecological performances

Nature-based Solutions for climate change adaptation can be implemented at various scales, from large natural parks to small green patches in the middle of more urbanised area. Each of these solutions can be considered as part of a larger green infrastructure. The size and shape of the different green patches, as well as the connectivity and proximity among them can be gathered under the notion of the spatial configuration of this green infrastructure. As a tool for landplaning, it would be useful to better understand how this spatial configuration can play a role in the conservation of biodiversity and the providing of the different expected ecosystemic services. A set of indicators derived from landscape ecology, mathematics and signal processing were used to characterize five dimensions of the spatial configuration: evenness, core area, isolation, roughness and fragmentation. These indicators are computed at different scales on land use and land cover data from a French conurbation. First results show that these different indicators bring complementary information and can be useful to establish a new typology of green infrastructures. A multiscale analysis will bring further information on the relevance of such indicators and at which scale they are the most useful. Subsequently, these spatial configuration indicators will be correlated with the results of ecosystemic services simulations to better understand how to optimize the ecological performances of green infrastructures.