Speaker
Description
Fragmentation of terrestrial and freshwater habitats produces negative impacts to wildlife populations, plant community persistence and overall ecosystem function. Preserving connectivity between crucial habitat areas and across large landscapes is vital to sustain biodiversity during ongoing anthropogenic global change. Identifying key ecological corridors at spatial extents large enough to capture current and future ecological dynamics and at resolutions fine enough to be useful for practitioners is a vital step in prioritizing areas for connectivity conservation. We used a novel multi-method connectivity framework to model the continental connectivity of 30 terrestrial vertebrate archetypes using over 900 individual species distribution models. We identified key ecological corridors across the continent, prioritizing each corridor by archetype and cumulatively across all terrestrial vertebrate species. The cumulative corridor prioritization identified many of the highest priority corridors for protection as being within the Mediterranean bioregion and corridors with mountainous regions that connected the continent’s largest most intact protected areas. There was consistent spatial overlap of corridors selected within archetypes of the same taxonomic class but substantial differences between archetypes of different classes. In addition, our results failed to identify corridors in some of the most developed and heavily fragmented portions of Western Europe, highlighting the scale of conservation efforts needed to restore adequate species habitat to allow for increased connectivity potential. This work represents the most comprehensive multi-taxa connectivity analysis completed at a multinational scale and provides guidance for EU member states as they attempt to meet the goals of the EU Biodiversity Strategy and Nature Restoration Regulation.
| Status Group | Postdoctoral Researcher |
|---|---|
| Poster Presentation Option | No, I prefer to present only as a talk. |
