Connectivity across the United States

A key issue in connectivity is determining which areas are priorities for management actions. Since not all fragmented habitat can or should be of high concern for conservation, it is critical for scientists and managers to have an unbiased, quantitative method for choosing where to focus resources on a large scale. Most attempts to prioritize areas in the past have been limited by spatial scope and by unrealistic characterization of habitat patches within the landscape context. However, in their new paper, Theobald et. al propose a novel model to identify natural landscape connectivity across the entire United States that can better inform conservation decisions for the future, especially as habitat shifts due to climate change.

The authors combined three unique methods to create their model: classifying habitat according to the degree of human modification, using a continuous gradient to define connectivity, and quantifying patch importance in the context of broader landscape configuration. With this modeling approach, they were able to create country-wide maps showing the degree of naturally connected landscape as well as connectivity “routes” (see figure). These results provide a non-biased approach to prioritizing connectivity regions at a much larger scale than previously envisioned, and can help inform connectivity conservation initiatives throughout the country at both the national and regional scale.