Overview of modeling techniques for ecological Connectivity in heterogeneous landscape

Abstract

Ecological connectivity in a landscape is one of the crucial factors for biodiversity conservation. Especially in case of large mammals like top carnivores. Frequent environmental changes have resulted in isolated world’s wildlife population which leads to increased pace biodiversity loss. Moreover, Increased human inhabitants and population shift towards the edge of forests provides animals with very less or no scope of living in the wilderness. As a result, ecological connectivity analysis and landscape planning are integral part of one another. This paper reviews the available techniques for quantifying dispersal in the landscape. A critical and thorough review of available theories of wide range of methods, techniques and tools for corridor analysis in conservation scenario is done in this paper. It also compiles various approach utilized globally. An exhaustive discussion on modeling techniques such as graph theoretic approaches (least cost path analysis, network analysis, etc), circuit theoretic approaches, agent based models and machine learning based approach is compiled for improved decision making.