Measuring biodiversity Scientists use different methods to determine whether a particular parcel of land is supportive of wildlife habitats and species diversity. Thus, parcels with a high land cover richness are assumed to have a higher level of biodiversity than parcels with just a few land covers. Data sources Floyd used the following sources of information to gather data about the characteristics of protected land in Worcester County. Next, she overlaid parcels in step one with land cover data from the GAP program to determine how many land cover types were contained in each parcel. This was used as a measure of land cover richness.
Larger parcels tend to have higher land cover richness.