Comment:

This index provides a degree of similarity in term of extent of contacts between environments belonging to different typologies. The value of Q ranges between 0 and 1where Qij is the relative extent of contacts between i and j environmental typologies; Kmax the highest value of Q in case all the contacts were of the same proportion. In this case Kmax = 2m ln m; m is the number of distinct land-type contacts. If there are more than two different patches of an ecomosaic (m > 2), Q values close to 1 indicate that in the examined territory landscape elements tend to be scattered, while Q values close to 0 indicate that the elements tend to aggregate. For this study, we assume better conditions are represented by the aggregation of elements because scattered and few extended patches are not large enough to support a significantly level of biodiversity especially those need habitat continuity or core areas, etc. Q = -(Σi Σj(Qij · lnQij))/Kmax