Enhancing conservation network design with graph-theory and a measure of protected area effectiveness: Refining wildlife corridors in Belize, Central America

Hofman, Maarten; Hayward, Matt W.; Kelly, Marcella J.; Balkenhol, Niko

doi:10.1016/j.landurbplan.2018.05.013

Cited by 56 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 64 publications

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“…At this stage, we assigned roads and urban areas a resistance value of 85 and 95% of the maximum resistance estimated for the tolerant and sensitive groups respectively because they present a major barrier for the movement of our focal species [56]. We used the resulting resistance surfaces as input to build functional connectivity networks among the core areas using least-cost path (LCP) and circuit theory methods.…”

Section: From Single To Multi-species Connectivity Scenariosmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Intuitively, one could contemplate using the protected areas, but because not all protected areas in Panama still have populations of all study species [36], or conversely species populations could occur in nonprotected areas, this approach would lead to inaccurate results. Instead, similar to Hofman et al [56], we used the output of the occupancy analysis to determine habitat concentration area (henceforth core area) defined as areas known to harbor important populations of the focal species [60]. We plotted the probability of occupancy against the proportion of the study area (Additional file 4).…”

Section: Defining Areas Important To Connectmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Towards the restoration of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor for large mammals in Panama: comparing multi-species occupancy to movement models

et al. 2020

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Background: Habitat fragmentation is a primary driver of wildlife loss, and the establishment of biological corridors is a conservation strategy to mitigate this problem. Identifying areas with high potential functional connectivity typically relies on the assessment of landscape resistance to movement. Many modeling approaches exist to estimate resistance surfaces but to date only a handful of studies compared the outputs resulting from different methods. Moreover, as many species are threatened by fragmentation, effective biodiversity conservation requires that corridors simultaneously meet the needs of multiple species. While many corridor planning initiatives focus on single species, we here used a combination of data types and analytical approaches to identify and compare corridors for several large mammal species within the Panama portion of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor. Methods: We divided a large mammal assemblage into two groups depending on the species sensitivity to habitat disturbance. We subsequently used cost-distance methods to produce multi-species corridors which were modeled on the basis of (i) occupancy of nine species derived from camera trapping data collected across Panama, and (ii) step selection functions based on GPS telemetry data from white-lipped peccary Tayassu pecari, puma Puma concolor, and ocelot Leopardus pardalis. In addition to different data sources and species groups, we also used different transformation curves to convert occupancy and step-selection results into landscape resistance values. Results: Corridors modeled differed between sensitive and tolerant species, between the data sets, and between the transformation curves. There were more corridors identified for tolerant species than for sensitive species. For tolerant species, several corridors developed with occupancy data overlapped with corridors produced with step selection functions, but this was not the case for sensitive species. Conclusion: Our study represents the first comparison of multispecies corridors parametrized with step selection functions versus occupancy models. Given the wide variability in output corridors, our findings underscore the need to consider the ecological requirements of several species. Our results also suggest that occupancy models can be used for estimating connectivity of generalist species. Finally, this effort allowed to identify important corridors within the MBC (i) at a country scale and (ii) for several species simultaneously to accurately inform the local authorities in conservation planning. The approach we present is reproducible in other sites and/or for other species.

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Section: From Single To Multi-species Connectivity Scenariosmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Defining Areas Important To Connectmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards the restoration of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor for large mammals in Panama: comparing multi-species occupancy to movement models

et al. 2020

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“…Bodin & Norberg, ; Jeliazkov et al, ), or in protected area modelling (e.g. Hofman, Hayward, Kelly, & Balkenhol, ). These networks are often mapped, where patches are nodes, and potential paths for dispersal among patches are links (Figure b–e; Dale & Fortin, ; Fall, Fortin, Manseau, & O’Brien, ; Urban et al, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The r toolbox grainscape for modelling and visualizing landscape connectivity using spatially explicit networks

2020

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Networks are widely used for modelling landscape connectivity and have many ecological and conservation applications. The nodes in these models describe geographic locations (such as habitat patches or protected areas) and links describe the potential for organisms (or their propagules) to move among nodes. We present the r package grainscape which facilitates working with these networks within a spatially explicit framework. Package analyses are based on the minimum planar graph, a class of network where links among nodes are influenced by the spatial characteristics of features across the entire landscape. Modelling outputs are compatible with downstream packages including igraph for network analysis and ggplot2 for visualization. Tools for analysis (e.g. finding corridors) and scaling networks (e.g. grains of connectivity) are also provided. Models can be exported for visualization and analysis in Geographic Information System (GIS) or network software. This package provides a computationally‐efficient programmatic toolbox for many landscape connectivity research questions, enabling researchers to easily customize models, work at large geographic extents, generate their own network metrics, conduct sensitivity analyses and seamlessly employ r statistical functions to test models using biological data. A detailed guide, provided as an Appendix, illustrates common analysis and model variants with accompanying r code.

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“…In recent years, ESPs have been applied in species protection and city planning. On the one hand, to guarantee species-specific communication for information and connectivity, some scholars constructed ecological corridors using ESPs and graph theory [39,40,41]. On the other hand, rapid urbanization has resulted in serious landscape fragmentation, fragile ecosystems, and prominent contradictions between resources and the environment, and some scholars constructed city ESPs to ensure the healthy development of cities [42,43,44].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Construction of Ecological Security Patterns in Nature Reserves Based on Ecosystem Services and Circuit Theory: A Case Study in Wenchuan, China

Fan

Liu

et al. 2019

IJERPH

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Facing the demands of biodiversity conservation and ecosystem service improvement, the spatial pattern optimization of nature reserves has always been a research topic of interest. However, there remains a lack of methodological guidance in the planning of nature reserves and the surrounding areas. To promote the landscape sustainability of nature reserves, we constructed ecological security patterns (ESPs) with two scenarios as a case study in Wenchuan, China. In detail, the ecological sources were identified by ecosystem service evaluation, and the resistance surface was characterized by the habitat quality. The ecological corridors were determined based on circuit theory and the minimum cumulative resistance model. The ecological sources were mainly aggregated in the protected areas, with an area of more than 1000 ha; the high-resistance values were mainly in the area with dense roads or high elevation. There were 21 corridors in the scenario of only optimizing the nature reserve, while 31 corridors were identified when considering non-nature reserves, and the landscape connectivity was enhanced accordingly. The result supported constructing the ESPs between nature and non-nature reserves in Wenchuan to further protect pandas, and a methodological contribution was made to understand the differences of ESPs between them, thus supporting a methodological formulation of sustainable landscape patterns.

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Enhancing conservation network design with graph-theory and a measure of protected area effectiveness: Refining wildlife corridors in Belize, Central America

Cited by 56 publications

References 64 publications

Towards the restoration of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor for large mammals in Panama: comparing multi-species occupancy to movement models

Towards the restoration of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor for large mammals in Panama: comparing multi-species occupancy to movement models

The r toolbox grainscape for modelling and visualizing landscape connectivity using spatially explicit networks

Construction of Ecological Security Patterns in Nature Reserves Based on Ecosystem Services and Circuit Theory: A Case Study in Wenchuan, China

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