Key connectors in protected forest area networks and the impact of highways: A transnational case study from the Cantabrian Range to the Western Alps (SW Europe)

Vicente, Mikel Gurrutxaga San; Rubio, Lidón; Saura, Santiago

doi:10.1016/j.landurbplan.2011.02.036

Cited by 146 publications

(128 citation statements)

References 62 publications

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“…This area is within a larger transnational initiative covering protected areas from the Cantabrian Range to the Western Alps (SW Europe), in which previous studies on connectivity and the barrier effect of roads for forest mammals have focused (Gurrutxaga et al 2011, Jongman et al 2011). The region is 49,472 km 2 in extent and contains the whole known range of the native populations of the brown bear in Spain, its peripheral areas and the belt area between the two subpopulations.…”

Section: Study Areamentioning

confidence: 99%

Estimating effective landscape distances and movement corridors: comparison of habitat and genetic data

et al. 2015

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Abstract. Resistance models provide a key foundation for landscape connectivity analyses and are widely used to delineate wildlife corridors. Currently, there is no general consensus regarding the most effective empirical methods to parameterize resistance models, but habitat data (species' presence data and related habitat suitability models) and genetic data are the most widely used and advocated approaches. However, the practical consequences of applying one or the other approach have not been well studied. To address this knowledge gap, we performed a comparative study on the implications of using habitat suitability versus genetic data for determining effective landscape distances (a proxy inversely related to isolation among patches) based on least-cost and circuit-theoretic approaches, and for identifying potential movement corridors. For our comparison, we used data for the Cantabrian brown bear in Spain, an endangered population for which connectivity has been identified as a major conservation concern. Our results show that for brown bears, habitat models tend to overestimate resistance to movement through non-optimal areas, whereas genetic data yield higher estimates of effective distances within habitat areas. Therefore, our results suggest that (1) dispersal might be generally less constrained by landscape conditions than habitat utilization in home ranges, and that (2) dispersing animals might be more flexible in their movement behavior than residents are in their habitat resource utilization behavior, with records for residents dominating species occurrence data and subsequent habitat models. The assessed approaches provided dissimilar connectivity models with notable differences in patterns of predicted corridors across the study area, mainly due to differences in predicted connections between subpopulations. Our results highlight that the functional differences in habitat vs. genetic data, as well as the assumptions and potential limitations of different analytical approaches that use these data, need to be considered more carefully in connectivity modeling and subsequent corridor delineation.

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Section: Study Areamentioning

confidence: 99%

Estimating effective landscape distances and movement corridors: comparison of habitat and genetic data

et al. 2015

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“…The direct dispersal probabilities p ij between habitat patches were computed by a negative exponential function of interpatch distance, which has been used in many published studies (Bunn et al 2000, Urban and Keitt 2001, Gurrutxaga et al 2011). The interpatch distance was calculated as the Euclidean and effective distance between all woodland and forest patches in the study area.…”

Section: Landscape Connectivity Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In addi-. In addition, increasing awareness about the need to account for the capability of species to traverse different types of land covers in landscape connectivity assessment has led to the promotion of related analytical methodologies such as least-cost path modeling (Adriaensen et al 2003, Rayfield et al 2010, Gurrutxaga et al 2011. Without excluding some level of uncertainty in matrix permeability modeling (McRae 2006, Rayfield et al 2010, these methodological advances, com-, these methodological advances, combined with more functional analytical approaches, provide an opportunity to incorporate less biased criteria based on conless biased criteria based on connectivity assessment in ecological network deployment.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Woodland bird response to landscape connectivity in an agriculture-dominated landscape: a functional community approach

Gil‐Tena¹,

Nabucet²,

Mony³

et al. 2014

Community Ecology

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Over the last 30 years, ecological networks have been deployed to reduce global biodiversity loss by enhancing landscape connectivity. Bird species dwelling in woodland habitats that are embedded in agriculture-dominated landscapes are expected to be particularly sensitive to the loss of connectivity. This study aimed to determine the role of landscape connectivity in woodland bird species richness, abundance, and community similarity in north-east Brittany (north-west France). An exhaustive woodland selection protocol was carried out to minimize the effects of woodland size on the response variables. Connectivity of the woodland and forest network in the study area was evaluated using graph-theory, accounting for matrix permeability, and a characteristic median natal dispersal distance at the community level based on the bird species pool recorded in the sampled woodlands. Information-theoretic model selection, controlling for woodland size in all the cases, depicted the response of woodland birds at the community level to the connectivity of agriculture-dominated landscapes. On average, the sampled woodlands (n = 25) contained 15.5 ± 2.4 bird species, with an abundance of 25.1 ± 3.9, and had highly similar bird communities (species composition and proportion); eight species represented 57% of total abundance and were present in at least 22 woodlands. The performance of models improved when using effective, rather than Euclidean, interpatch distances in the connectivity assessment. Landscape connectivity was only significantly related to similarity of proportional species composition. Large woodlands contained communities with more similar species proportions in an inhospitable agricultural landscape matrix than in a more permeable one. Woodland size was the most relevant factor determining species abundance, indicating that the bird population sizes are primarily proportional to the local habitat availability. Connectivity in relation to landscape matrix permeability did not seem to induce the flow of woodland-dependent bird species that are dominant in the community but rather of matrix-dwelling bird species that are less dependent on woodland patch area. In conclusion, both habitat conservation and restoration (i.e., amount and quality), in combination with permeable landscape structures (such as heterogeneous land cover mosaics), are advocated for community level conservation strategies.

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“…PC is defined as the probability that two points randomly placed within the landscape fall into habitat areas that are reachable from each other (interconnected), given a set of n habitat patches and the links among them (Saura and Pascual-Hortal, 2007). The probability of direct dispersal (p ij ) between each pair of patches (required for the computation of the PC metric) can be estimated using a negative exponential function of the interpatch edge-to-edge Euclidean distance (Urban and Keitt, 2001;Pascual-Hortal and Saura, 2008) or of the effective distance (minimum cost) between patches (Rayfield et al, 2010;Gurrutxaga et al, 2011). The prioritisation and ranking of landscape elements by their contribution to overall connectivity can be calculated from the percentage of variation in PC (dPC) caused by the removal of each individual element (patch or link) from the landscape.…”

Section: Evaluating the Importance Of Connecting Elements Through Thementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The habitat availability metrics have been applied in many studies (Neel, 2008;Pascual-Hortal and Saura, 2008;García-Feced et al, 2011;Pereira et al, 2011;Awade et al, 2012) (see a full list in http://www.conefor.org/ applications.html). More recently, the research attention has been focused on the connector fraction, both in network analytical (Bodin and Saura, 2010;Baranyi et al, 2011) and ecological application studies (Gurrutxaga et al, 2011;Saura et al, 2011;Rubio and Saura, 2012). This is because, for the reasons outlined above, this fraction is directly usable for a solid and operational design of networks of connecting elements.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sustaining forest landscape connectivity under different land cover change scenarios

et al. 2012

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Managing forest landscapes to sustain functional connectivity is considered one of the key strategies to counteract the negative effects of climate and human-induced changes in forest species pools. With this objective, we evaluated whether a robust network of forest connecting elements can be identified so that it remains efficient when facing different types of potential land cover changes that may affect forest habitat networks and ecological fluxes. For this purpose we considered changes both in the forested areas and in the non-forest intervening landscape matrix. We combined some of the most recent developments in graph theory with models of land cover permeability and least-cost analysis through the forest landscape. We focused on a case of study covering the habitat of a forestdwelling bird (nuthatch, Sitta europaea) in the region of Galicia (NW Spain). Seven land-use change scenarios were analysed for their effects on connecting forest elements (patches and links): one was the simplest case in which the landscape is represented as a binary forest/non-forest pattern (and where matrix heterogeneity is disregarded), four scenarios in which forest lands were converted to other cover types (to scrubland due to wildfires, to extensive and intensive agriculture, and to urban areas), and two scenarios that only involved changes in the non-forested matrix (renaturalization and intensification). Our results show that while the network of connecting elements for the species was very robust to the conversion of the forest habitat patches to different cover types, the different change scenarios in the landscape matrix could more significantly weaken its long-term validity and effectiveness. This is particularly the case when most of the key connectivity providers for the nuthatch are located outside the protected areas or public forests in Galicia, where biodiversity-friendly measures might be more easily implemented. We discuss how the methodology can be applied to a wide range of forest landscape management situations, where both the conservation of the forest critical areas and an adequate management of the landscape matrix between them are of concern to achieve the sustainability of the ecological flows and ecosystem services at the wider forest landscape scale.Key words: Forest habitat networks; Forest landscape planning; Least-cost modelling; Spatial graphs; Habitat availability metrics; Landscape matrix; Sitta europaea. ResumenConservación de la conectividad del paisaje forestal bajo diferentes escenarios de cambio en las cubiertas del suelo La gestión de los bosques para mantener la conectividad ecológica se considera una de las estrategias clave para contrarrestar los efectos negativos provocados por el cambio climático y de los usos del suelo sobre las especies forestales. Con este objetivo, en este estudio evaluamos la posibilidad de identificar una red de elementos conectores forestales que sea robusta y eficiente ante cambios potenciales en las cubiertas del suelo que puedan afectar a las redes ...

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Key connectors in protected forest area networks and the impact of highways: A transnational case study from the Cantabrian Range to the Western Alps (SW Europe)

Cited by 146 publications

References 62 publications

Estimating effective landscape distances and movement corridors: comparison of habitat and genetic data

Estimating effective landscape distances and movement corridors: comparison of habitat and genetic data

Woodland bird response to landscape connectivity in an agriculture-dominated landscape: a functional community approach

Sustaining forest landscape connectivity under different land cover change scenarios

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