As the human footprint expands into natural landscapes, habitat for wildlife is becoming more fragmented and less connected. Given that human modification will continue to make land challenging to or even inaccessible for wildlife movement, identifying areas that maintain or restore ecological connectivity remains a critical conservation priority.
Belote, R.T., Barnett, K., Zeller, K., Brennan, A. and Gage, J. 2022. Examining local and regional ecological connectivity throughout North America. Landscape Ecology 37: 2977-2990.
To address this challenge, common methods of mapping connectivity often focus on species avoidance of certain landscape features as the basis of resistance to movement between core habitats. In these cases, a focal species is used as a proxy to estimate the functional connectivity of the landscape when core areas are known. However, taking a species-specific approach can limit how broadly mapping results can be applied, especially when those results are based on only one resistance surface and one spatial scale.
In contrast, a recent continent-wide mapping study aims to identify landscape connectivity depending on the degree of human landscape modification across multiple scales without core areas. To accomplish this, researchers mapped omnidirectional connectivity across North America using landscape resistance that is “species-agnostic,” i.e. without a focal species. This approach puts more weight on the structural connectivity of the landscape, and assumes that land that is the most “natural” will facilitate connectivity for multiple species.
The model outputs provide insight into connectivity across the continent. For example, small spatial scales measuring different degrees of human modification highlighted the importance that small, fragmented habitat patches can have on landscape connectivity. These areas, which are embedded within highly developed areas, can easily be overlooked during broad scale landscape planning and have the potential to contribute to a significant amount of land toward achieving 30×30 goals. When combined, small habitat patches identified an additional 5.3% of land area important for connective, which could have otherwise been excluded during landscape planning.
The analyses provide important insight to understanding the relationship between species movement and human modification. The model outputs could be used to compare species-specific connectivity models and observations to determine which mapped scenario best aligns with actual movement of individuals in areas of human modification. These models allow conservation practitioners to create targeted conservation goals for use in multi-scale conservation planning to inform future work.
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