Mean Euclidean Nearest Neighbour Distance (ENN_MN)
The mean Euclidean Nearest Neighbour Distance confirmed that the accumulated impacts of urban development will lower the proximity between the same class of patches. As expected, sparsely placed small open space patches and agricultural land patches are in isolation, particularly for the mid-term and long-term scenarios. Interestingly, the agricultural patches have the relatively highest mean nearest neighbour distance compared to the other three types of ecosystems, which means that the agricultural patches are not proportionately distributed across the landscape. The clumpy and aggregated pattern of cropland patches makes the shortest distance to the same class patches much longer than usual. Although it is logical that fragmentation leads to longer distances between patches, the nearest neighbour distances of the critical ecosystems were decreased during the initial stages. However, theproximity seemsto benot resultingfrom thereflectionof actualpatchnearness,but