The BioREGIO Carpathians project: aims, methodology and results from the “Continuity and Connectivity” analysis

Abstract

BioREGIO Carpathians is a transnational cooperation project, co-financed under the second call of the EU South East Europe Transnational Cooperation Programme, priority area "Protection and Improvement of the Environment". BioREGIO Carpathians run for three years (2011)(2012)(2013) and is a flagship project for the Carpathian Convention (article four dealing with landscape and biological diversity), its Biodiversity Protocol and the Biodiversity Working Group. The project is built on the conservation, restoration and valorisation of the Carpathians ecological continuum to enable large herbivores and carnivores to live in coexistence with modern society. The Carpathian countries are expecting a massive pressure to modernize and extend their road infrastructures. If not considering the requirements of ecological network, this run-to-development will enhance landscape fragmentation, limit dispersal and genetic exchange of wildlife species. BioREGIO applied a multi-disciplinary approach (physical, legal and socioeconomic) in order to identify the most influencing barriers regarding connectivity throughout the Carpathians. Using two ArcGIS 10.0 tools in a three-step approach and a series of site visits, the continuity and connectivity analysis identified not only physical barriers but also legal aspects and socio-economic behaviour that are influencing ecological connectivity and playing a major role to conserve wildlife population. The investigation on the ground together with local experts and stakeholders enabled the adaptation of the GIS results and the development of feasible solutions to overcome the detected barriers with recommended priorities for implementing appropriate measurements to maintain connectivity and to sustain large carnivores, herbivores and biodiversity in the Carpathians. RESEARCH ARTICLE Launched to accelerate biodiversity conservation A peer-reviewed open-access journalFilippo Favilli et al. / Nature Conservation 11: 95-111 (2015) 96

Ecological corridors for the amphibians and reptiles in the Natura 2000 sites of Romania

“…By examining the multi-species corridors, we observed that the Carpathian Mountains are the most likely landscape unit where these linkages can be created with great success. The Carpathians are a well-known hot spot for biodiversity in Europe 86 , with large continuous natural areas 87 , and projects involving connectivity in the Carpathians have been developed in recent years 88 . Areas along the Danube River also showed great connectivity, where almost continuous corridors between SCIs were obtained (more so for amphibians than reptiles).…”

Application of the Continuum Suitability Index (CSI) model to display the permeability of the Alpine-Dinaric landscape and to define intervention priorities for ecological linkages

“…It was conducted with the Linkage Mapper Toolset and its Linkage Pathways Tool (LinkageMapper.org). The LCP represents the route along which the least resistance -imposed by the landscape matrix on the general wildlife movements -occurs (Favilli et al, 2015). The LCP identi es the route of least cumulative resistance for a species moving between two SACA1 areas (McRae and Kavanagh 2012; Jones, 2015; Beier, 2018; Cayton 2019).…”

“…This would serve as a foundation for de ning the actions on the ground that might facilitate both the dispersal of individuals within a species among natural areas and human-wildlife coexistence, thus identifying the potential socioeconomic bene ts for the given territories and local inhabitants. We selected a structural connectivity approach in the project area, and avoided concentrating on functional connectivity (as in Taylor et al, 1993Taylor et al, , 2006Favilli et al, 2015), which describes an organism's behavioural response to both the landscape structure and the landscape matrix. The structural connectivity analysis has a more holistic approach and describes the physical relationships and permeability between habitat patches (Hilty et al, 2020).…”

Methodology for Identifying Ecological Corridors: A Spatial Planning Perspective

“…Weights used for each habitat factor and each layer. The figure also presents the final weights obtained by choosing the weighted geometric mean (data processed after [35][36][37]). For the land cover categories, a different number of weights was used (four and five categories), considering that in Season 2 and Season 4 (spring and autumn, with five categories) the brown bear has a larger area of movement, due to its needs (see Table 4) (our contribution on the basis of [36]).…”