Landscape configuration Landscape

Land cover diversity influences the quality and quantity of food resources and habitats. This applies not only to the heterogeneity of the agricultural landscape itself, but also to the surrounding landscape matrix, which provides food resources and habitats for species found in the agricultural landscape. The configuration of a landscape can be described by the size and shape of the land cover classes or by the indices of connectivity or fragmentation derived from these parameters for a reference area. The effective mesh size (meff) is used here as a measure of landscape fragmentation. It indicates the probability that two randomly selected points in a region lie within a given area, or how heterogeneous the region under investigation is. The calculation of the indicator is based on a mean of a time series (currently 2017–2025) with national spatial coverage.

Last updatet: 2026 Based on Indicator Sheetv2025_1

Landscape diversity (the effective mesh size (meff)) between 2017 and 2025, based on the Digital Basic Landscape Model (Basis-DLM) and using the classification of soil-climate regions.

The map shows the values for landscape diversity in Germany, derived from the Digital Basic Landscape Model (Basis-DLM), based on the effective mesh size (meff). In the presentation, the indicator values, which are determined for 100 ha hexagons, are aggregated at the level of soil-climate regions and shown as an average value for the entire data collection period from 2017 to 2025.

Both the small-scale differentiation of the indicator values at the landscape level and a gradient from south-west to north-east Germany are clearly visible. Whilst large parts of eastern Germany, the coastal regions in the north, and the Alpine foothills are predominantly characterised by high indicator values (=homogeneous, large-scale landscapes), the landscapes in the low mountain ranges and in south-western Germany tend to have lower values (=heterogeneous, small-scale landscapes).

Landscape configuration Landscape

Status of the indicator

Medium- and long-term trend of the indicator

Basis of the Survey