PARENT SESSION
Organized Oral Session 2: Measuring landscape connectivity - tool for species conservation
Organizer(s): P Kindlmann, F Burel, and J Baudry
Monday, August 8, 8:00 AM - 11:30 AM, Meeting Room 510b, Level 5, Palais des congrès de Montréal
Connectivity measures: Can a ceasefire be achieved by focusing on target organisms?
Kindlmann, Pavel *,1, 2, Burel, Francoise 2, 1 Institute of Landscape Ecology, Ceske Budejovice, Czech Republic2 UMR Ecobio, CNRS, Rennes, France
ABSTRACT- One of the central problems in contemporary conservation biology is drastic change of landscape towards intensive agricultural production, which entails fragmentation of habitats for many wild living species. In such species, local extinctions of fragmented populations are common and recolonization of local extinctions is critical for regional survival of the species. Whether or not patches can be re-colonized depends on the availability of dispersing individuals and the ease with which these individuals can move about within the landscape. The latter is usually called landscape connectivity. The potential for landscape connectivity to impact populations in heterogeneous landscapes, and the obvious implications for conservation biology, has led to a proliferation of connectivity measures. However, general relationships between landscape connectivity and landscape structure are lacking, and so are the relationships between different connectivity metrics. Consequently, there is a need to develop landscape metrics that more accurately characterize the landscape with a view toward the underlying processes. Here we review published definitions of landscape connectivity, put them into context with particular groups of organisms, attempt to give exact mathematical definitions of how connectivity is understood, and draw some unifying conclusions and suggestions for future research.
Key words: connectivity, definition, measure, landscape