LandScape Corridors (lscorridors): a new software package for modelling ecological corridors based on landscape patterns and species requirements

Abstract

Maintaining connectivity is one of the main challenges for biodiversity conservation world-wide. Ecological corridors are important to maintain landscape connectivity, but their efficiency depends on landscape patterns and species responses at different spatial extents and landscape contexts. 2. We developed a new ecologically oriented free software package, LandScape Corridors (LSCORRIDORS), to improve ecological corridor design by considering biodiversity responses to landscape attributes at a variety of spatial extents. LandScape Corridors considers stochastic variation, species perception and landscape influence on organisms in the design of ecological corridors. In addition to the least cost path algorithm, we propose four different methods for the simulation of multiple-path functional ecological corridors. One method uses the information for each pixel separately, whereas the three other methods permit corridor simulation considering the landscape context at different spatial extents. 3. LandScape Corridors permits to simulate corridors for species with different requirements and considers that different species perceive and respond to the surrounding landscape in different ways, as many species may choose to move through areas that may not be the most permeable ones in the landscape. Two parameters in LSCORRIDORS modulate the stochasticity in corridors simulations. The first parameter is the level of variability added to the input resistance map in each simulation, resulting in more variable and spatially spread-out corridors. The other parameter is the spatial extent that may influence each pixel; larger extents result in larger spatial zones affecting each pixel during corridors simulations. In addition, when considering spatial influence, the simulations may be performed for species highly, medially or less sensitive to habitat quality. 4. Some currently available software are not free or depend on a paid GIS software to work. In addition, some software do not support large matrices in their simulations, limiting their use. LandScape Corridors is designed to deal with large rasters, is based on strictly freeware software, and is freely available online. This allows the users to implement new methods for modelling multi-scale and ecologically based corridors. 5. LandScape Corridors is a potential tool for the identification of protected areas, as corridor simulation considers species movement and landscape connectivity, essential characteristics to aid in large-scale biodiversity conservation, especially in anthropogenic landscapes. LandScape Corridors provides what we may call a zone for conservation, showing a set of connected areas in the landscape which may be ordered according to their potential for ecological corridors or which may be used as an aid for conservation strategies or ecological restoration projects.

Landscape resistance influences effective dispersal of endangered golden lion tamarins within the Atlantic Forest

“…Following a landscape genetics approach (Storfer et al, 2007), we simulated multi-path ecological corridors using the LSCorridors package (Ribeiro et al, 2017) to assist the choice of sampling locations of the social groupsmore information on LSCorridors can be obtained at https://github.com/LEEClab/LS_CORRIDORS. As a result, we selected 48 social groups that had a minimum of two sampled individuals and covered various ranges of corridor coststhis step is best-described below in Spatial analysis section.…”

“…The package simulates multiple corridor routes between pairs of sources and targets allowing for individual variability on space use and movement. We used the MP (Measures by Pixel) method, which considers no influence of neighbor pixels of a given position resistance when generating the multiple paths; variability parameter was set to 2 (Ribeiro et al, 2017). After simulating the corridors for all pairs of sites, we calculated the following landscape metrics from corridor outputs: (1) Euclidean Distance (ED)straight-line distance (given in km) that separates two individuals; (2) Resistance-based Distance (RD)effective distance (given in km) between two individuals assuming that GLTs prefer to move along the most permeable paths; (3) Landscape Resistance (LR)referred to the isolation by resistance, was calculated as the sum of the costs of crossing each pixel of the simulated corridors; and (4) Landscape Connectivity (LC = ED / LR) (Adriaensen et al, 2003;McRae, 2006;Santos, 2014;Spear et al, 2010).…”

Positive responses of flower visiting bees to landscape heterogeneity depend on functional connectivity levels

“…For the landscape connectivity estimation, we used the free software package LandScape Corridors (LSCorridors) to simulate functional ecological corridors (Ribeiro et al, 2017). The environmental quality based resistance values shown in Table 1 were attributed to each pixel of the same raster land cover maps used for the heterogeneity measures, generating resistance surfaces over which LSCorridors could simulate multiple-paths corridors through areas with high likelihood of use by bees.…”

Ecologia da paisagem para o planejamento da infraestrutura verde da cidade de São Paulo, SP

“…Entretanto, para que os corredores sejam efetivos em facilitar dispersão, durante o seu planejamento devem ser consideradas as características biológicas e os requisitos de vida das espécies (RIBEIRO, et al, 2017). Nesse sentido, a abordagem de caminhos de menor custo tem sido utilizada em diferentes contextos, incluindo paisagens urbanas (LAPOINT et al, 2015).…”

“…No presente estudo, os caminhos de menor custo foram modelados no software Landscape Corridors (LSCORRIDORS), que considera a percepção das espécies e a influência da paisagem nos organismos para a simulação de diversos corredores ecológicos simultaneamente (RIBEIRO, et al, 2017). Dessa forma, pode estabelecer rotas alternativas, que minimizam os custos de movimento através da paisagem, constituindo ferramenta ideal para estudos em áreas urbanas .…”