Quantifying landscape connectivity for wild Asian elephant populations among fragmented habitats in Thailand

Suksavate, ‪Warong; Duengkae, Prateep; Chaiyes, Aingorn

doi:10.1016/j.gecco.2019.e00685

Cited by 13 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 40 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The PAs serve as a habitat for a growing population of several hundred wild elephants (Jarungrattanapong & Sajjanand, 2012; Menkham et al, 2019), with some PAs reaching a population density of 0.2 elephants/km 2 (Kitratporn & Takeuchi, 2020). Elephants often exit the PAs and individuals can wander as far as 30 km from the boundaries (Suksavatea, Duengkaeb, & Chaiyes, 2019). In 2012, approximately 70–80 elephants lived in the area between the PAs and agricultural land (Jarungrattanapong & Sajjanand, 2012).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beehive fences as a sustainable local solution to human‐elephant conflict in Thailand

Water

King

Arkajak

et al. 2020

Conservat Sci and Prac

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

As human-elephant conflict (HEC) increases, a better understanding of the human dimensions of these conflicts and non-violent mitigation methods are needed to foster long-term coexistence. In this study, we conducted household questionnaires (n = 296) to assess the prevalence of HEC and attitudes towards elephants in four rural villages in Thailand. In addition, we evaluated a pilot beehive fence as a sustainable solution for HEC. The majority of the households reported seeing or hearing elephants near their property at least once a week (84.9%) and experienced negative impacts from elephants in the last 5 years, (81.0%). The beehive fence deterred 88.4% of individual elephants (n = 155) and 64.3% of elephant groups (n = 28) that approached the fence. Most elephants (70.7%) exhibited behaviors suggesting heightened attentiveness or alarm. The farm owner reported economic and social benefits of the beehive fence. By contributing to farmer income and reducing crop damage caused by wild elephants, beehive fencing may provide an important locallymanaged complement to regional HEC mitigation methods.

show abstract

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beehive fences as a sustainable local solution to human‐elephant conflict in Thailand

Water

King

Arkajak

et al. 2020

Conservat Sci and Prac

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Therefore, in order to facilitate effective planning, provision of land and infrastructure development, the connectivity, bottlenecks, and region-based connectivity characteristics could be useful and informative for authorities in allocating conservation resources to areas with high conservation value. However, these passages will also be helpful in connecting other species to their sub populations in the study area [18,68], while minimizing interactions with human society.…”

Section: Implications and Recommendationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Many quantitative approaches, such as the least-resistant path [53,57,58,[60][61][62] and the circuit theory [63][64][65][66][67], have been recently developed to assess the connectivity and barriers associated with movement pathways. However, a majority of the studies on connectivity analysis are based on the characteristics of the landscape [59,63,64,[68][69][70][71][72][73][74][75][76], while only few studies [69,70] have considered human-wildlife conflict occurrence when assessing connectivity. Conflict-prone regions act as a significant movement barrier, which forces the species to adapt accordingly by changing their use of resources [76][77][78].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Analysis of Landscape Connectivity among the Habitats of Asian Elephants in Keonjhar Forest Division, India

et al. 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Land development has impacted natural landforms extensively, causing a decline in resources and negative consequences to elephant populations, habitats, and gene flow. Often, elephants seek to fulfill basic needs by wandering into nearby human communities, which leads to human–elephant conflict (HEC), a serious threat to conserving this endangered species. Understanding elephant space use and connectivity among their habitats can offset barriers to ecological flow among fragmented populations. We focused on the Keonjhar Forest Division in Eastern India, where HEC has resulted in the deaths of ~300 people and several hundred elephants, and damaged ~4100 houses and ~12,700 acres of cropland between 2001 and 2018. Our objectives were to (1) analyze elephant space use based on their occupancy; (2) map connectivity by considering the land structure and HEC occurrences; (3) assess the quality of mapped connectivity and identify potential bottlenecks. We found that (1) the study area has the potential to sustain a significant elephant population by providing safe connectivity; (2) variables like forests, precipitation, rural built-up areas, cropland, and transportation networks were responsible for predicting elephant presence (0.407, SE = 0.098); (3) five habitat cores, interconnected by seven corridors were identified, of which three habitat cores were vital for maintaining connectivity; (4) landscape features, such as cropland, rural built-up, mining, and transportation networks created bottlenecks that could funnel elephant movement. Our findings also indicate that overlooking HEC in connectivity assessments could lead to overestimation of functionality. The study outcomes can be utilized as a preliminary tool for decision making and early planning during development projects.

show abstract

“…In the past decades, various methods of landscape ecology have been applied to assessing landscape connectivity and planning ecological networks (Li et al, 2015), (Zhang and Wang, 2006), such as landscape metrics to detect and monitor ecological changes (Narumalani et al, 2004;Su et al, 2010;Tian et al, 2011;Pan et al, 2019), circuit theory, gravity modelling, least-cost approach and graph theory to identify ecological corridors, develop green space networks, and also evaluate landscape connectivity (Kong et al, 2010), (Zhang et al, 2019), (Hofman et al, 2018), (Suksavate et al, 2019). In this paper, first, we evaluated land use changes and their ecological connectivity using landscape metrics, and then least-cost ecological corridors were identified to create green space networks based on graph theory and least-cost modelling.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ecological networks and corridors development in urban areas: An example of Tabriz, Iran

Mahmoudzadeh

Masoudi²,

Jafari³

et al. 2022

Front. Environ. Sci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Landscape fragmentation and the elimination of urban green spaces are the results of human activities which put significant pressure on urban sustainability. The planning and developing of urban ecological networks and corridors as an effective approach is a response to rapid urbanization and fragmentation of natural areas. The Tabriz metropolitan as the fourth-largest city in Iran was selected as a case study that has grown rapidly over the past few decades. This study presents a practical approach and framework for assessing and enhancing ecological connectivity of landscape. The framework was developed based on the landscape metrics, graph theory, least-cost modeling, and geographic information system tools during three different periods (1984-2000-2020). The results using the values of landscape metrics such as CA, Edge Distance, Mean Patch Size, Mean Shape Index, large patch index, NP, Landscape shape index, and COHESION indicate that the urban landscape of Tabriz has been more fragmented over the past 3 decades and has lost its connectivity. To reduce the effects of fragmentation and enhance landscape connectivity in study area, we proposed a network of ecological corridors that passes through the core ecological patches. Our results also indicate that the core patches and the least-cost created corridors are mainly located in the suburbs of Tabriz and the central part of the city cannot be suitable for ecological development. Therefore, using the above-mentioned methods could be an effective approach to develop ecological networks and improve landscape connectivity that can encourage urban planners and managers to protect and develop green networks.

show abstract

Quantifying landscape connectivity for wild Asian elephant populations among fragmented habitats in Thailand

Cited by 13 publications

References 40 publications

Beehive fences as a sustainable local solution to human‐elephant conflict in Thailand

Beehive fences as a sustainable local solution to human‐elephant conflict in Thailand

Analysis of Landscape Connectivity among the Habitats of Asian Elephants in Keonjhar Forest Division, India

Ecological networks and corridors development in urban areas: An example of Tabriz, Iran

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About