Habitat fragmentation

Habitat fragmentation, as the name implies, describes the emergence of discontinuities in an organism's preferred environment, causing population fragmentation. Habitat fragmentation can be caused by geological processes that slowly alter the layout of the physical environment.
The term habitat fragmentation includes five discrete phenomena:

*Decrease in the average size of each patch of habitat
*Decrease of the interior : edge ratio
*Isolation of one habitat fragment from other areas of habitat
*Breaking up of one patch of habitat into several smaller patches
*Reduction in the total area of the habitat