Daigle, RM, Metaxas, A, Balbar, AC et al. (5 more authors) (2020) Operationalizing ecological connectivity in spatial conservation planning with Marxan Connect. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 11 (4). pp. 570-579. ISSN 2041-210X
Abstract
1. Globally, protected areas are being established to protect biodiversity and to promote ecosystem resilience. The typical spatial conservation planning process leading to the creation of these protected areas focuses on representation and replication of ecological features, often using decision support tools such as Marxan. Yet, despite the important role ecological connectivity has in metapopulation persistence and resilience, Marxan currently requires manual input or specialized scripts to explicitly consider connectivity.
2. ‘Marxan Connect’ is a new open source, open access Graphical User Interface (GUI) tool designed to assist conservation planners with the appropriate use of data on ecological connectivity in protected area network planning.
3. Marxan Connect can facilitate the use of estimates of demographic connectivity (e.g. derived from animal tracking data, dispersal models, or genetic tools) or structural landscape connectivity (e.g. isolation by resistance). This is accomplished by calculating metapopulation‐relevant connectivity metrics (e.g. eigenvector centrality) and treating those as conservation features or by including the connectivity data as a spatial dependency amongst sites in the prioritization process.
4. Marxan Connect allows a wide group of users to incorporate directional ecological connectivity into conservation planning with Marxan. The solutions provided by Marxan Connect, combined with ecologically relevant post‐hoc testing, are more likely to support persistent and resilient metapopulations (e.g. fish stocks) and provide better protection for biodiversity.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2020 The Authors. Methods in Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Ecological Society. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
Keywords: | decision support software, demographic, ecological connectivity, Marxan, migration, movement ecology, spatial conservation planning, structural connectivity |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Biological Sciences (Leeds) > School of Biology (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 03 Mar 2020 14:42 |
Last Modified: | 07 Apr 2020 13:50 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Identification Number: | 10.1111/2041-210x.13349 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:157896 |