Quantifying the links and connectivity of forest patches through habitat availability metrics in Ilam city

Subject Areas : natural resorces

aniss jafari ¹ , FARSHAD Keivan Behjou ² , Mohammad Ahmadi ³ , Raoof Mostafazadeh ^{4 *}

1 - M.Sc Student in Silviculture and Forest Ecology‎, Faculty of Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of Mohaghegh Ardabili, Iran.
2 - Professor, Dept. of Natural Resources, Faculty of Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of Mohaghegh Ardabili, Iran.
3 - Associate Professor, Dept. of Natural Resources, Faculty of Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of Mohaghegh Ardabili, Iran.
4 - Associate Professor, Dept. of Natural Resources, Faculty of Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of Mohaghegh Ardabili, Iran. *(Corresponding Author)

Received: 2017-02-03 Accepted : 2017-05-24 Published : 2018-04-18

Keywords: Landscape, Habitat connectivity, Patch links, Graph theory.,

Abstract :

Background and Objective: The degradation and fragmentation of native ecosystems causes a serious challenge in the management and conservation of landscape, which have a great impact on different ecological processes.

Habitats and changing habitats it creates a continuous separation and the formation of a separate, smaller spots. The aim of this study is evaluating forest patches connection with the use of indicators of access to habitat of Ilam city forests using CONEFOR Sensinode 2.2 software.

Method: The forest land cover of the study area was used to calculate the connectivity indices including Integral index of connectivity (IIC), probability of connectivity (PC), the number of links (NL) and contribution of patch in connectivity (PCconnector) to determine the importance of continuity of habitat patches.

Findings: The results showed that the value of Integral index of connectivity was 0.26 in low density forest. While, the IIC value were 0.02 and 0.04, in moderate and dense forest land cover, respectively. Also, the highest positive significant correlation (p<0.01) had exist between connected areas and connection probability of different patches of each land cover.

Discussion and Conclusions: In general, the values of habitat accessibility and connectivity indices were too low in the study area. As well as the relationship between moderate and good forest patches were so weak in the forest landscape.

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