Data from: Multi-purpose habitat networks for short-range and long-range connectivity: a new method combining graph and circuit connectivity

Biodiversity conservation in landscapes undergoing climate and land-use
changes requires designing multipurpose habitat networks that connect the
movements of organisms at multiple spatial scales. Short-range
connectivity within habitat networks provides organisms access to
spatially distributed resources, reduces local extinctions and increases
recolonization of habitat fragments. Long-range connectivity across
habitat networks facilitates annual migrations and climate-driven range
shifts. We present a method for identifying a multipurpose network of
forest patches that promotes both short- and long-range connectivity. Our
method uses both graph-theoretic analyses that quantify network
connectedness and circuit-based analyses that quantify network
traversability as the basis for identifying spatial conservation
priorities on the landscape. We illustrate our approach in the
agroecosystem, bordered by the Laurentian and Appalachian mountain ranges,
that surrounds the metropolis of Montreal, Canada. We established forest
conservation priorities for the ovenbird, a Neotropical migrant, sensitive
to habitat fragmentation that breeds in our study area. All connectivity
analyses were based on the same empirically informed resistance surface
for ovenbird, but habitat pixels that facilitated short- and long-range
connectivity requirements had low spatial correlation. The trade-off
between connectivity requirements in the final ranking of conservation
priorities showed a pattern of diminishing returns such that beyond a
threshold, additional conservation of long-range connectivity had
decreased effectiveness on the conservation of short-range connectivity.
Highest conservation priority was assigned to a series of stepping stone
forest patches across the study area that promote traversability between
the bordering mountain ranges and to a collection of small forest
fragments scattered throughout the study area that provide connectivity
within the agroecosystem. Landscape connectivity is important for the
ecology and genetics of populations threatened by climate change and
habitat fragmentation. Our method has been illustrated as a means to
conserve two critical dimensions of connectivity for a single species, but
it is designed to incorporate a variety of connectivity requirements for
many species. Our approach can be tailored to local, regional and
continental conservation initiatives to protect essential species
movements that will allow biodiversity to persist in a changing climate.