Software to enable biodiversity

With many national and international efforts focused on preserving biodiversity, the maintenance and development of ecological connectivity is something researchers have been studying intently. A new methodology, along with accompanying software, has been developed by researchers at the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, which can be used to maintain and enhance ecological connectivity and habitat conservation during landscape planning.

Ecological connectivity, or landscape connectivity, is a way of describing how effectively the landscape eases the movement of a species, the genetic exchange and other ecological flows between populations and habitats distributed along a landscape.

The study, coordinated by the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) in collaboration with other centres, has resulted in the development of a methodology based on new indexes to quantify the size of possible habitat areas for various species. This will aid the decision making over conservation planning and management, which needs to be geared towards maintaining and enhancing a landscape’s ecological connectivity.

The methodology was implemented as free software called Conefor and enables researchers to counteract the adverse effects of fragmentation and isolation of ecosystems, while also facilitating species adaptation to movements in their environments caused by climate change and other factors.

The study comes in the midst of increasing global pressures over the destruction of natural ecosystems brought about by deforestation, the growth rate of transport networks, urban development, intensification of agriculture and other changes in soil uses. Scientists are calling for measures to be taken that will guarantee the viability, on-going existence and development of wildlife biodiversity.

The study aims to highlight the importance of the establishment and restoration of corridors and other connectors between habitats as well as mitigation of the barrier effect caused by highways and other road infrastructures.

However, so far, the practical application of these concepts and considerations has been limited due to a lack of procedures and proven methodologies that, with a solid and quantitative base, would allow managers to incorporate effective and operational criteria for landscape planning, the network design of protected areas or conservation of endangered species. In order to overcome these shortcomings, the researchers at the UPM School of Forestry, led by Professor Santiago Saura Martínez de Toda, have developed this new methodology. The related software has already achieved worldwide acceptance.

The Conefor software has been used in the planning of an urban development in Stockholm, Sweden; in the identification of critical areas in Spain and Brazil where birds are threatened; and in the monitoring of biodiversity and fragmentation of an ecosystem in Europe by the European Commission and European Environment Agency.