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Prioritizing Urban Habitats for Connectivity Conservation: Integrating Centrality and Ecological Metrics

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Abstract

Connectivity among fragmented areas of habitat has long been acknowledged as important for the viability of biological conservation, especially within highly modified landscapes. Identifying important habitat patches in ecological connectivity is a priority for many conservation strategies, and the application of ‘graph theory’ has been shown to provide useful information on connectivity. Despite the large number of metrics for connectivity derived from graph theory, only a small number have been compared in terms of the importance they assign to nodes in a network. This paper presents a study that aims to define a new set of metrics and compares these with traditional graph-based metrics, used in the prioritization of habitat patches for ecological connectivity. The metrics measured consist of “topological” metrics, “ecological metrics,” and “integrated metrics,” Integrated metrics are a combination of topological and ecological metrics. Eight metrics were applied to the habitat network for the fat-tailed dunnart within Greater Melbourne, Australia. A non-directional network was developed in which nodes were linked to adjacent nodes. These links were then weighted by the effective distance between patches. By applying each of the eight metrics for the study network, nodes were ranked according to their contribution to the overall network connectivity. The structured comparison revealed the similarity and differences in the way the habitat for the fat-tailed dunnart was ranked based on different classes of metrics. Due to the differences in the way the metrics operate, a suitable metric should be chosen that best meets the objectives established by the decision maker.

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Acknowledgments

The Department of Sustainability and Environment of the Victorian Government supplied the input data for this study. Special thanks to Dr. Matt White who prepared the input habitat maps for this study. Thanks go to Dr. Peter Menkhorst who provided consultation on the spatial ecology of the fat-tailed dunnart and filled in the questionnaires. Special thanks to Dr. Brad McRae and Dr. Bronwyn Rayfield for their valuable guidance on the use of Linkage Mapper and least-cost modeling. Sincere thanks go to Mr. Hossein Pourali and Mr. Stephen Page for their technical advice on ArcGIS. Dr. Tore Opsahl gave valuable guidance on the use of tnet package of software R. Ascelin Gordon was supported by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions. The Iranian Ministry of Science, Research and Technology sponsored this research.

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Author notes

  1. Fatemeh Poodat

    Present address: Department of Architecture, Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz, Ahvaz, Iran

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Mathematical and Geospatial Sciences, RMIT University, GPO Box 2476, Melbourne, VIC, 3001, Australia

    Fatemeh Poodat, Colin Arrowsmith & David Fraser

  2. School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, GPO Box 2476, Melbourne, VIC, 3001, Australia

    Ascelin Gordon

Authors
  1. Fatemeh Poodat
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  2. Colin Arrowsmith
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  3. David Fraser
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  4. Ascelin Gordon
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Correspondence to Fatemeh Poodat.

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Dr. David Fraser retired now from SMGS RMIT University.

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Poodat, F., Arrowsmith, C., Fraser, D. et al. Prioritizing Urban Habitats for Connectivity Conservation: Integrating Centrality and Ecological Metrics. Environmental Management 56, 664–674 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-015-0520-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-015-0520-2

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