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Prepared by Olivia Torresan
When habitat is broken up or fragmented, species find it harder to use their habitat effectively. Fragmenting is common in urban areas where roads and property can prevent species from crossing to other habitable areas. This can be a big problem for the organisms that live there. Individuals and populations ultimately become separated, and when compared to larger, connected areas, fragmented areas have lower access to food, shelter, resources, and lower genetic diversity.
Conservation managers and decision makers rely on a variety of expert information about habitat connectivity to make predictions about where species’ might live, or have the ability to live in the future. Outside of whether a habitat is physically connected or not, there are also other variables like climate and geology that will determine habitat suitability. Each organism’s mobility also makes a big difference (e.g., a bird is inherently more mobile compared to a plant or fungus). Therefore, mapping and modelling connectivity can be complicated.
Under these concerns, Norman & Mackey (2024) used ALA data to help improve the precision of Australia-wide habitat connectivity maps. Their study mapped both habitat patches and their respective levels of connectivity for several forest-dwellers: Rainforest pigeons, gliding possums, and multiple species of black cockatoos (glossy, Carnaby’s, Baudins and red-tailed). Each map was then adjusted to consider levels of movement fatigue between suitable patches for each species (under a cost assumption that shorter connectivity routes are preferred).
Online resources for mapping habitat connectivity are often specific to state services and jurisdictions, rather than biological boundaries. Their findings—available as an interactive tool—provide clear, actionable and quickly accessible prioritisation zones for conservation managers and decision makers to aid habitat connectivity for each species.
