Key connectors in protected forest area networks and the impact of highways: a transnational case study from the Cantabrian Range to the Western Alps (SW Europe).

The connectivity of protected area networks depends on key elements located in strategic positions within the landscape, which uphold the ecological fluxes and sustain the diversity and longterm viability of native biota. Landscape planning requires objective and quantitative approaches to identify those key elements and reinforce the spatial coherence of protected area designs and related conservation schemes. With this objective, we apply for the first time recent methodological developments that, deriving from the probability of connectivity index, allow evaluating the role of both individual protected areas and links in the intermediate landscape matrix as providers of connectivity between the rest of the sites in the network. We focus on a case study covering the forest protected areas from the Cantabrian Range to the Western Alps (N Spain, S France and NW Italy), considering different dispersal distances and the impact of highways. We show how the proposed approach is useful to identify those protected areas and links that most contribute to uphold functional connectivity in this transnational network, as well as those road sectors where the defragmentation and barrier effect mitigation measures should be prioritized. We compare our results with other more qualitative and expert-based approaches that have been reported in the same area. The methodological approach could be easily adopted in a variety of other related landscape planning applications at different scales, with the required quantitative tools being available as free and open source software packages.

Data and Resources

Metadata
Download
DCAT-AP/NTI-RISP

Basic information
Resource type Text
Date of creation 2024-09-17
Date of last revision 2024-09-17
Show changelog
Metadata identifier 0c8ad836-40fe-531e-aab4-f89962738224
Metadata language Spanish
Themes (NTI-RISP)
High-value dataset category
ISO 19115 topic category biota
Other identifier
Keyword URIs
Character encoding UTF-8
Spatial information
INSPIRE identifier ESPMITECOIEPNBFRAGM556
INSPIRE Themes
Geographic identifier Spain
Coordinate Reference System
Spatial representation Type
Bounding Box
"{\"type\": \"Polygon\", \"coordinates\": [[[-18.16, 27.64], [4.32, 27.64], [4.32, 43.79], [-18.16, 43.79], [-18.16, 27.64]]]}"
Spatial resolution of the dataset (m)
Provenance
Lineage statement
Metadata Standard
Conformity
Source dataset
Update frequency
Sources
  1. Landscape and Urban Planning. Vol. 101
  2. Num. 4
  3. pags. 310-320
Purpose
Process steps
Temporal extent (Start)
Temporal extent (End)
Version notes
Version
Dataset validity
Responsible Party
Name of the dataset creator Gurrutxaga, M., Rubio, L. y Saura, S.
Name of the dataset maintainer
Identifier of the dataset creator
Email of the dataset creator
Website of the dataset creator
Identifier of the dataset maintainer
Email of the dataset maintainer
Website of the dataset maintainer