Recent studies carried out by landscape and urban ecologists have shown that habitat fragmentation has negative environmental effects and is accountable for the loss of biodiversity. The development and extension of road infrastructure to support economic growth, the urbanization and the land-use changes are major drivers of habitat fragmentation. Planners have attempted to develop tools for restoring connectivity and stopping biodiversity loss at the landscape scale and which can be applied at the urban scale, too. The study fills in the gap by developing a methodology for identifying the ecological corridors of a Romanian large carnivore (brown bear) in the Romanian Carpathian Mountains at several spatial scales. The methodology relies on geospatial data; this is equally its most important advantage and challenge. Our findings suggest that the implementation of ecological corridors in current planning practice must be completed cautiously, provided the possible restrictions are imposed on economic activities by plans, and highlight the importance of field data in increasing the scientific soundness of the results. In addition, the findings show the need to interconnect spatial planning policies with environmental policies by improving the actual legislation.

A solution for the habitat fragmentation, decline of biodiversity, loss of ecosystems and ecosystem services can be to increase the number of protected areas and the connectivity between them, by creating ecological corridors. Since this conservation practice is becoming more relevant considering the climate change, the concept of ecological connectivity must be integrated in most political frameworks, especially in relation with the spatial development, requiring appropriate legislation. The article aims at proposing a new technique of ecological connectivity modeling, demonstrated by a specific methodology aiming to identify the ecological corridors used the brown bear (Ursus arctos) within the Natura 2000 sites in the Romanian Carpathian Mountains covered by the Buzau County. The processed GIS layers together with the ArcGIS.x Corridor Design Tool were used to map the permeability in the studied area and thus to identify the ecological corridors. The obtained results are useful tools for spatial planners that must integrate, adapt and accept these corridors in their plans. It is the first study published at national level, a novel one, in which ecological corridors for the brown bear are identified based on a County Land Use Plan, embedding the ecological dimension in the concept of spatial planning.

A green-blue infrastructure is essential for achieving the European Green Deal objectives and can be used to protect large cities and their metropolitan areas against urban sprawl. Green-blue infrastructure is an important research topic, because green-blue planning networks provide solutions for mitigating contemporary growing urban and climate challenges. Our study aims to create an innovative methodology for defining and analyzing the elements of green-blue infrastructure and their connectivity within Bucharest, Romania and its metropolitan area, to serve as a planning model. The methodology consists of merging European geodata sets with metropolitan and local data, using GIS tools, and analyzing the connectivity within the study area. All connections resulted from implementing the Linkage Mapper tool were operationalized, using high-resolution satellite images and correcting obtained connections, so that deviations from reality were minimized. The results consist of a conceptual model for planning the green-blue infrastructure within Bucharest and in its metropolitan area, embedding an analysis of its connectivity. The study contributes to implementing the concept of green infrastructure in urban and spatial planning, providing tools for planning the green-blue infrastructures of large cities and their metropolitan areas and, implicitly, reducing urban sprawl, improving air quality and mitigating environmental threats due to climate change.