Ecosystem heterogeneity has been widely recognized as a key ecological indicator of several ecological functions, diversity patterns and change, metapopulation dynamics, population connectivity or gene flow.In this paper, we present a new R package-rasterdiv-to calculate heterogeneity indices based on remotely sensed data. We also provide an ecological application at the landscape scale and demonstrate its power in revealing potentially hidden heterogeneity patterns.The rasterdiv package allows calculating multiple indices, robustly rooted in Information Theory, and based on reproducible open-source algorithms.

BIOME Lab Department of Biological Geological and Environmental Sciences Alma Mater Studiorum University of Bologna Bologna Italy

CNR IIA C O Physics Department M Merlin University of Bari Bari Italy

DAGRI Department of Agriculture Food Environment and Forestry University of Florence Firenze Italy

Department of Agriculture Food Environment and Forestry University of Florence Firenze Italy

Department of Civil Environmental and Mechanical Engineering University of Trento Trento Italy

Department of Computational Science University of Zurich Zurich Switzerland

Department of Environmental Biology University of Rome La Sapienza' Rome Italy

Department of Environmental Science Macquarie University Sydney NSW Australia

Department of Geography Earth System Science University of Zurich Zurich Switzerland

Department of Geography Remote Sensing Laboratories University of Zurich Zurich Switzerland

Department of Geosciences and Geography University of Helsinki Helsinki Finland

Department of Life Sciences University of Trieste Trieste Italy

Department of Mathematics University of Trento Povo Italy

Department of Mathematics University of Zurich Zurich Switzerland

Department of Pathology Microbiology and Immunology School of Veterinary Medicine University of California Davis CA USA

Department of Remote Sensing University of Wuerzburg Würzburg Germany

Department of Spatial Sciences Faculty of Environmental Sciences Czech University of Life Sciences Prague Praha Suchdol Czech Republic

EcoBio UMR 6553 Université de Rennes CNRS Rennes France

Faculty of Geo Information Science and Earth Observation University of Twente Enschede The Netherlands

Faculty of Science and Technology Free University of Bolzano Bozen Piazza Universitá Universitätsplatz 1 Bolzano Italy

Georges Lemaître Center for Earth and Climate Research Earth and Life Institute UCLouvain Louvain la Neuve Belgium

Inria Bordeaux Sud Ouest Talence France

Jet Propulsion Laboratory California Institute of Technology Pasadena CA USA

Plant Ecology and Nature Conservation Group Wageningen University Wageningen The Netherlands

Remote Sensing of Environmental Dynamics Laboratory DISAT Universitá degli Studi Milano Bicocca Milano Italy

School of Geography University of Nottingham Nottingham UK

Unit of Computational Biology Research and Innovation Center Fondazione Edmund Mach San Michele all'Adige Italy

UR Ecologie et Dynamique des Systèmes Anthropisés Université de Picardie Jules Verne Amiens France

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