Prioritizing habitat conservation outside protected areas in rapidly urbanizing landscapes: A patch network approach: Fid-Bau Portal

Prioritizing habitat conservation outside protected areas in rapidly urbanizing landscapes: A patch network approach

Xun, Bin / Yu, Deyong / Wang, Xue

Highlights•Habitats around protected areas should be given special care in terms of improving landscape connectivity.•A spatially explicit representation of habitat mosaics makes conservation planning intuitive and accessible.•Scenario analysis is important for determining future urban conservation strategies.•Habitat networks should be species specific and dynamically consummated during the urbanization process.

AbstractBiodiversity conservation is challenging in urbanizing landscapes where recurring habitat degradation occurs and space is limited for subsequent restoration. Conservation efforts based on natural reserves may not be able to maintain certain ecological processes that extend beyond the reserves. There is an urgent need to conserve or restore critical habitats outside of protected areas to maintain the functional connectivity of habitat networks. In this study, we developed a connectivity modelling approach associated with varying conservation scenarios to establish habitat conservation priorities in a rapidly urbanizing area of Shenzhen, China. We incorporated unprotected habitat patches into the reserve network via four scenarios and prioritized the contributions of these patches to habitat connectivity. We also investigated the responses of species with different dispersal abilities to habitat changes under each conservation scenario. The results showed that the spatial pattern of unprotected habitats played an important role in enhancing the connectivity of the entire network within the study area. The habitat patches around protected areas could create greater connectivity gains and should be prioritized for conservation. The key patches that substantially enhance connectivity were identified as special conservation concerns. The connectivity benefits from different scenarios were closely linked with species dispersal abilities. This study promotes the understanding of the importance of habitats outside of protected areas in urbanizing landscapes and provides the species-specific and spatially explicit conservation schemes for making informed decisions in urban planning and management.