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Landscape Connectivity: A Comprehensive View from Different Perspectives

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A special issue of Land (ISSN 2073-445X). This special issue belongs to the section "Landscape Ecology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 October 2023) | Viewed by 13297

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Special Issue Editors

Dr. Carlos T. López De Pablo

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Guest Editor

Department of Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolution, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, UCM, 28040 Madrid, Spain
Interests: landscape ecology; landscape planning; ecological cartography
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Prof. Dr. Andreu Bonet-Jornet

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Guest Editor

Department of Ecology, University of Alicante, Alicante, Spain
Interests: landscape ecology; biodiversity conservation; restoration ecology
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The ecological functioning of the landscape, which generates the services on which the welfare of society is based, depends on the spatial connections between different sites in the landscape. These connections consist of flows of matter, energy and information over different scales. These connections constitute the ecological basis of landscape connectivity.

The flows and the consequences of their changes can be studied from different points of view and geographical scales, depending on the services involved, so the study of landscape connectivity must be approached from complementary perspectives.

The functional approach, functional connectivity, emphasizes the connections responsible for the maintenance of ecological processes in the landscape. Connections between patches, such as protected areas in conservation networks, and the design of ecological corridors have also been considered. Another approach focuses on studies for individual species, especially protected ones, to move through a landscape. In addition, there are those that study the effects of the changes that global change can produce and those of the measures that are being adopted to mitigate them: solar farms, wind farms, tree plantations to store carbon, increased risk of fires, etc. Finally, the expansion of urban areas introduces new components in the connectivity of the landscape, the importance of which is increasing. In all these cases, the spatial configuration of landscape elements involved in connectivity is relevant, and it is not usually taken into account in global change mitigation policies.

This Special Issue aims to address landscape connectivity considering this variety of points of view, which are not independent. This will provide a global view of this basic aspect of landscape ecology and spatial planning.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not necessarily limited to) the following: landscape functional connectivity, connectivity in nature conservation networks, connectivity in species conservation, and connectivity in new landscapes resulting from climate change mitigation or minimization new uses and urban development. We also seek integrative studies for sustainable and innovative responses to reverse negative ecological effects of ecological connectivity loss, as a result of land use changes and changes in environmental factors.

Dr. Carlos T. López De Pablo
Prof. Dr. Andreu Bonet-Jornet
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Land is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

functional connectivity
nature conservation networks
land use changes
habitat connectivity
landscape change
global change

Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

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21 pages, 8952 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Balancing Urban Expansion and Ecological Connectivity through Ecological Network Optimization—A Case Study of ChangSha County

by Shaobo Liu, Yiting Xia, Yifeng Ji, Wenbo Lai, Jiang Li, Yicheng Yin, Jialing Qi, Yating Chang and Hao Sun

Land 2023, 12(7), 1379; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/land12071379 - 11 Jul 2023

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1215

Abstract

The counties have experienced urban expansion and landscape pattern fragmentation. As carriers of new urbanization, the balanced development between urban expansion and landscape connectivity in the counties needs to be emphasized. The uncontrolled expansion of land should be discouraged and planners need to clarify land use expansion patterns. Using Changsha County as the study area, the characteristics of the landscape pattern between 2000 and 2020 were analyzed. The morphological spatial pattern analysis and landscape connectivity method (CMSPACI), as well as the minimum cumulative resistance (MCR) model, was used to construct the ecological network. We also explored the most appropriate corridor width using the buffer zone to guide future land use planning and ecological network planning. The results show that based on CMSPACI the total area of ecological sources identified was 304.91 km², encompassing a large area of forest parks. The total length of the 25 ecological corridors identified by the MCR model was 431.97 km. Ecological sources and corridors are missing in the central region; so, their pattern was optimized using landscape connectivity and the absence of location as selection criteria. The optimized network indices showed significant improvement. The width of the ecological corridors should be controlled in order to be in the range of 30 m to 50 m to maximize the effect of the corridors on species dispersal and migration. Our proposed research framework for the construction and optimization of EN in Changsha County can provide ideas to balance the contradictions between urban expansion and landscape connectivity in Changsha County. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Landscape Connectivity: A Comprehensive View from Different Perspectives)

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25 pages, 12807 KiB

Open AccessFeature PaperArticle

A Connectivity Approach to Agricultural Diffuse Pollution in Tropical Montane Catchments Dominated by Swidden Landscapes

by Luc Sandevoir, Laurent Lespez and Candide Lissak

Land 2023, 12(4), 784; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/land12040784 - 30 Mar 2023

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1120

Abstract

Shifting cultivation is widely practiced in many tropical mountainous watersheds. Agricultural practices are changing with the intensification of activities and the development of industrial monocultures associated with increasing land use and the use of pesticides and fertilisers. These changes have consequences for the evolution of sediment transfers in watersheds, resulting in new vulnerabilities for the inhabitants. This article shows the evolution of structural connectivity over 5 years in the village of Houaylack-Vangven, located in northern Laos, and its potential links with agricultural diffuse pollution. To develop a structural source-to-sink model to understand sediment transfers, our method was based on open-access data and various geographical tools. Field surveys were conducted to identify areas vulnerable to erosion and sediment transfers. The sources and sinks were then located using remote sensing techniques and image interpretation to then characterise connectivity rates. Finally, the relationship between the sources and sinks was analysed by graph theory to explore the potentialities for assessing the connectivity and exposure of sediment sinks. The main results are twofold: sinks coincide with areas at risk of contamination by pesticides and fertilisers, and the structural connectivity increases with the increasing of the source surfaces (swidden plots) due to the ongoing agricultural transition. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Landscape Connectivity: A Comprehensive View from Different Perspectives)

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18 pages, 13366 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Identification of Urban and Wildlife Terrestrial Corridor Intersections for Planning of Wildlife-Vehicle Collision Mitigation Measures

by Andrius Kučas, Linas Balčiauskas and Carlo Lavalle

Land 2023, 12(4), 758; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/land12040758 - 28 Mar 2023

Viewed by 1820

Abstract

Roadkill and other impacts of roads on wildlife create pressures on society and the environment, requiring the implementation of mitigation measures in response. Due to various natural and anthropogenic causes, the locations of wildlife–vehicle collisions are not stable in time and space. The identification of urban and wildlife corridor intersections can help anchor collision locations along high-risk road sections. Urban and wildlife corridors and their intersections were identified in a case study of Lithuania using a landscape connectivity identification method based on circuit theory. A strong relationship was found between the numbers of urban–wildlife corridor intersections and the numbers of wildlife–vehicle collisions. Short road sections were characterised by the number of urban–wildlife corridor intersections, mammal–vehicle collisions, and the presence of fencing. Multi-criteria analyses identified the road sections where wildlife fencing is, simultaneously, the longest, and the number of mammal–vehicle collisions and the number of urban–wildlife corridor intersections are highest. The results show that identifying wildlife and urban corridor intersections can reinforce locations for permanent roadkill mitigation measures. The identification of crossing structure type and location within shortlisted road sections and evaluation of their efficiencies remain the challenges for field research. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Landscape Connectivity: A Comprehensive View from Different Perspectives)

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22 pages, 49708 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Construction and Optimization of Wetland Landscape Ecological Network in Dongying City, China

by Jun Ma, Qiang Yu, Huiyuan Wang, Linzhe Yang, Ruirui Wang and Minzhe Fang

Land 2022, 11(8), 1226; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/land11081226 - 03 Aug 2022

Cited by 10 | Viewed by 2112

Abstract

Rapid urbanization has led to deteriorated wetland water quality, reduced biodiversity, and fragmented wetland landscapes, which seriously threaten the sustainable development of regional ecology. Based on land use data of Dongying City, Shandong Province, in 2020, this study selected the landscape disturbance degree and landscape fragility index to construct a landscape ecological risk evaluation model and to analyze the spatial distribution characteristics of landscape ecological risk in Dongying City in 2020. The MSPA-Conefor-MCR model was used to extract the ecological network of wetlands in Dongying City, and the topological structure indices were quantitatively analyzed. Combined with the actual situation within the study area, the source sites to be optimized were identified by risk zoning and source importance; the ecological resistance surface was modified using landscape ecological risk, and the ecological network was optimized by simulating edge increase in order to evaluate the robustness of the ecological network before and after optimization and to verify the edge increase effect. The results show that the ecological risk in Dongying is high, mainly distributed in the central region and extending to the northeast, southeast, southwest, and northwest. A total of 131 ecological source sites (6 core and 125 resting-stone source sites) and 180 ecological corridors were extracted, and the whole ecological network was found to be less stable and to have stronger network heterogeneity using a topological analysis. By simulating 11 additional edges, the robustness of the optimized ecological network was significantly improved. Optimizing the simulated-edge increase can enhance the smoothness of ecological energy flow, which can provide a scientific basis for the construction of the ecological security pattern of wetlands in Dongying City. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Landscape Connectivity: A Comprehensive View from Different Perspectives)

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18 pages, 4564 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Validation Procedure for Ecological Corridor Locations

by Etienne Lalechère and Laurent Bergès

Land 2021, 10(12), 1320; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/land10121320 - 01 Dec 2021

Cited by 9 | Viewed by 2329

Abstract

Connectivity conservation analysis is based on a wide range of approaches designed to pinpoint key ecological corridors in order to maintain multispecies flows. However, the lack of validation procedures with accessible data prevents one from evaluating the accuracy of ecological corridor locations. We propose a new validation procedure to evaluate the accuracy of ecological corridor locations in landscape connectivity approaches. The ability of the procedure to properly rank the accuracy of different landscape connectivity approaches was illustrated in a study case. Maxent model and circuit theory were used to locate ecological corridors for forest bird species, following three approaches based on land cover, umbrella species and multispecies presence data. The validation procedure was used to compare the three approaches. Our validation procedure ranked the three approaches as expected, considering that accuracy in locating ecological corridors is related to the biological realism of calibration data. The corridors modelled were more accurate with species presence data (umbrella and multispecies approaches) compared to land cover proxy (habitat-based approach). These results confirm the quality of the validation procedure. Our validation procedure can be used to: (1) evaluate the accuracy of the location of ecological corridors; (2) select the best approach to locate ecological corridors, and (3) validate the underlying assumptions of landscape connectivity approaches (e.g., dispersal and matrix resistance values). Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Landscape Connectivity: A Comprehensive View from Different Perspectives)

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Review

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21 pages, 3657 KiB

Open AccessReview

Selecting Graph Metrics with Ecological Significance for Deepening Landscape Characterization: Review and Applications

by Felipe de la Barra, Audrey Alignier, Sonia Reyes-Paecke, Andrea Duane and Marcelo D. Miranda

Land 2022, 11(3), 338; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/land11030338 - 25 Feb 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2720

Abstract

The usual approaches to describing and understanding ecological processes in a landscape use patch-mosaic models based on traditional landscape metrics. However, they do not consider that many of these processes cannot be observed without considering the multiple interactions between different land-use patches in the landscape. The objective of this research was to provide a synthetic overview of graph metrics that characterize landscapes based on patch-mosaic models and to analyze the ecological meaning of the metrics to propose a relevant selection explaining biodiversity patterns and ecological processes. First, we conducted a literature review of graph metrics applied in ecology. Second, a case study was used to explore the behavior of a group of selected graph metrics in actual differentiated landscapes located in a long-term socioecological research site in Brittany, France. Thirteen landscape-scale metrics and 10 local-scale metrics with ecological significance were analyzed. Metrics were grouped for landscape-scale and local-scale analysis. Many of the metrics were able to identify differences between the landscapes studied. Lastly, we discuss how graph metrics offer a new perspective for landscape analysis, describe the main characteristics related to their calculation and the type of information provided, and discuss their potential applications in different ecological contexts. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Landscape Connectivity: A Comprehensive View from Different Perspectives)

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