Search Results (3)

The bush cricket Saga pedo, listed as Vulnerable globally by the IUCN and included in Annex IV of the EU Habitats Directive, is a parthenogenetic species highly sensitive to environmental changes, facing threats from forest expansion and agricultural intensification. S. pedo prefers dry, open habitats with sparse vegetation, and its pronounced thermo-heliophily makes it an indicator of xerothermic habitats. In many areas of Italy, including the Northern Apennines (Piedmont), semi-natural grasslands are fragmented. Open habitats have been reduced to small, isolated patches surrounded by forests due to the abandonment of agropastoral activities. Consequently, the occurrence of open habitat species is related to the quality and availability of suitable areas and ecological connectivity. We developed a spatial Bayesian framework to identify areas of occurrence for S. pedo. Using the inverse probability of occurrence, we derived ecological corridors among suitable patches. Our findings indicate that the occurrence and connectivity of S. pedo are reduced by intensive cultivation but favored by open habitats with 10–50% woody tree cover, suggesting sustainable land management is crucial for supporting the species. Given the extinction risk S. pedo faces, we urge local administrations to maintain and improve suitable areas and guarantee the network of ecological corridors identified. Full article

Connectivity modeling has been a tool available to the conservation community since the 1980s that guides our responses to habitat fragmentation. While the sophistication of computer modeling continues to grow, on-the-ground delivery remains challenging and lacks urgency. We present an approach to scale up delivery and do so within effective timeframes. The approach, termed ANCHOR (Areawide Networks to Connect Habitat and Optimize Resiliency), is grounded in connectivity science but executed in a manner that is flexible, expandable, and measurable. ANCHOR goes beyond the traditional protected area focus for establishing connected biomes to maximize the contributions of existing public lands and expand private landowner participation. The approach is applied using an umbrella species to represent a faunal group and/or multiple taxa to deliver co-benefits of landscape connectivity. Public lands receive connectivity rankings that are then used to engage potential connectivity partners who commit land units and collectively monitor improvements in habitat quality and landscape resiliency. The ANCHOR approach can guide unprecedented participation across agencies and departments to create public lands networks, while private and corporate lands establish landscape connections. To illustrate the approach, we present an example of native grasslands conservation in the central and eastern U.S. and an emerging partnership with the Department of Defense. Full article

The conservation field is experiencing a rapid increase in the amount, variety, and quality of spatial data that can help us understand species movement and landscape connectivity patterns. As interest grows in more dynamic representations of movement potential, modelers are often limited by the capacity of their analytic tools to handle these datasets. Technology developments in software and high-performance computing are rapidly emerging in many fields, but uptake within conservation may lag, as our tools or our choice of computing language can constrain our ability to keep pace. We recently updated Circuitscape, a widely used connectivity analysis tool developed by Brad McRae and Viral Shah, by implementing it in Julia, a high-performance computing language. In this initial re-code (Circuitscape 5.0) and later updates, we improved computational efficiency and parallelism, achieving major speed improvements, and enabling assessments across larger extents or with higher resolution data. Here, we reflect on the benefits to conservation of strengthening collaborations with computer scientists, and extract examples from a collection of 572 Circuitscape applications to illustrate how through a decade of repeated investment in the software, applications have been many, varied, and increasingly dynamic. Beyond empowering continued innovations in dynamic connectivity, we expect that faster run times will play an important role in facilitating co-production of connectivity assessments with stakeholders, increasing the likelihood that connectivity science will be incorporated in land use decisions. Full article