Fragstats software: spatial pattern analysis for categorical maps
Fragstats software, documentation and tutorials are no longer made available from this site; please refer to www.fragstats.org for all material pertaining to Fragstats.
Briefly, FRAGSTATS is a free computer software program distributed under the GNU public license. Fragstats computes a wide variety of landscape metrics for categorical map patterns. The original software (version 2) was released in the public domain in 1995 in association with the publication of a USDA Forest Service General Technical Report (McGarigal and Marks 1995). Since then, hundreds of professionals have enjoyed the use of FRAGSTATS. Due to its popularity, the program was completely revised in 2002 (version 3). The latest public version (v4) was initially released in 2012 and reflected a major revamping of the software, with a completely redesigned architecture and graphical user interface with support for a wide variety of image formats and a variety of sampling methods for analyzing sub-landscapes.
The original version of FRAGSTATS (v2), published in 1995, was developed by Dr. McGarigal and Barbara Marks of Oregon State University. Ms. Marks was the programmer and primary technical support person for the original release. Version 3 was developed by Dr. Kevin McGarigal with programming by Eduard Ene and additional programming assistance by Chris Holmes. Chris Holmes was responsible for the initial reprogramming. Eduard Ene, an independent consultant and former associate of the UMass Landscape Ecology Lab, is now the principal programmer. Dr. Sam Cushman and Dr. Maile Neel provided valuable input during the development and testing of version 3. Version 4 is the last public release version and was developed and supported by Dr. McGarigal and Dr. Cushman with programming by Eduard Ene. Version 5 is currently under development and will include additional functionality for analyzing cell metrics and continuous surface patterrns.
Dr. McGarigal is the primary contact person for questions and comments regarding all versions of FRAGSTATS.