SpeciesLink: An Ecological Connectivity Prediction Model for Designing Wildlife Corridor Networks in Fragmented Landscapes

Abstract

Habitat fragmentation is a major cause of biodiversity loss since it leads to population isolation as well as gene flow, dispersal, and species persistence disruption. Therefore, predicting and creating wildlife corridors is a critical element to maintaining connectivity through fragmented landscapes. In this research paper, SpeciesLink, an ecological connectivity prediction model, has been introduced in order to find out the corridor networks between the isolated habitat patches. It includes landscape resistance surface and movement and habitat suitability information of each species in order to produce predictive connectivity maps for ecological planning. Differently from conventional approaches with a single-metric approach, SpeciesLink is a multi-algorithm prediction model in order to increase reliability and applicability. In order to assess the performance of this prediction model, it has been used with landscape and species distribution information in order to test its capability in recognizing the ecologically relevant corridors. The results show that SpeciesLink is successful in producing the high-priority connectivity zones which can be considered as the corridors for movements.