Anchor Areas to Improve Conservation and Increase Connectivity within the Brazilian Mesopotamia of Biodiversity

Abstract

We propose a new methodology based on graph theory for selecting high priority "anchor areas" to which conservation and restoration activities could be "attached", in order to maximize the impact of the available resources on biodiversity conservation and on increasing the landscape functional connectivity. Anchor areas are defined as habitat fragments which are among the largest present in the landscape and the most important for maintaining the landscape functional connectivity, as quantified by the Integral Index of Connectivity (IIC). Recommended actions include increasing the protection of the anchor areas and restoring smaller fragments in their neighborhood whose size and placement make them convenient "stepping stones" in the establishment of ecological corridors between the anchor areas and other areas with a potentially high biological importance. We illustrate our approach with an analysis of the sizes and functional connections between remaining forest fragments in the "Mesopotamia of Biodiversity", a portion of Brazilian Atlantic Forest with an especially rich biodiversity situated between the rivers Jequitinhonha and Doce.

GIS and Spatial Analysis Meet Conservation: a Promising Synergy to Address Biodiversity Issues

“…The same pattern can be observed in this Special Issue, where studies covered all spatial scales, the regional extent was the most frequent, and some studies were developed across different scales (e.g. Jenkins et al 2011;Crouzeilles et al 2011;Holvorcem et al 2011).…”

“…Almost 20% of the papers were related to "environmental change", theme that was present in the special issue associated to climate change and land use change (Dobrovolski et al 2011). The issues "area conservation prioritization" or "spatial support decision" were present in 18% of the papers, being well represented in this special issue Jenkins et al 2011;Crouzeilles et al 2011;Holvorcem et al 2011;Lemes et al 2011). "Scale" was addressed by 10% of the papers and also by Diniz-Filho & Bini (2011).…”

“…"Threats and impacts on biodiversity" and "biodiversity assessment, management and monitoring" were the research theme in more than 30% of the papers (see Esteves et al 2011;Koblitz et al 2011). The themes "habitat fragmentation and connectivity" and "measures of ecosystems properties, goods and services" were addressed by more than 25% of the papers, and are also present in this special issue (respectively in Crouzeilles et al 2011;Holvorcem et al 2011;Ladle et al 2011). Almost 20% of the papers were related to "environmental change", theme that was present in the special issue associated to climate change and land use change (Dobrovolski et al 2011).…”

Site Selection for Restoration Planning: A Protocol With Landscape and Legislation Based Alternatives

“…Site selection for restoring connectivity via corridors has been shown to be particularly helpful towards biodiversity management (Holvorcem et al 2011). Our protocol helps the user to design three options for corridors, which can be used independently or combined in sequence to select sites for corridor establishment.…”

A Framework for Setting Local Restoration Priorities Based on Landscape Context

“…Although there are some initiatives that have already considered landscape characteristics while setting restoration priorities at regional (Rodrigues & Bononi 2008;Gama et al 2013;Tambosi et al 2014) and local scales (Holvorcem et al 2011), there are some issues that still need to be addressed. First, regional studies usually present a large number of areas with similar priority values (e.g.…”