Patch Isolation Analysis of Peri-Urban Natural Ecosystem; The Case of Bahirawakanda Terrain, Kandy, Sri Lanka

Development impact on Natural ecosystems is especially a major problem in the developing world. This is mainly due to the rapid urban developments and inadequate concern of managing natural ecosystems. Urban and peri- urban natural terrain ecosystems are the most vulnerable ecosystems, facing this predicament. This research investigates, using the remote sensing field, the ecological deterioration due to the neglect of natural terrain in the rapid urbanization process. In Sri Lanka, the field of remote sensing is not widely applied in analyzing urban issues. The study focuses on understanding and calculating the ecological impact with reference to Kandy Bahirawakanda natural peri-urban terrain ecosystem based on remote sensing field. There are four ecological impact indexes that can be used to measure the impact using remote sensing technology. This paper uses the patch isolation index as the measuring device to measure the increase of isolation of ecological patches.This approach provides a clear insight in to how a singular ecological patch fragments in to the separate patches and the increase of gaps between those patches. This provides a very good physical and visual indication of one important aspect of the destruction of natural ecosystems.