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landscape ecology notes on corridor
Typology: Study notes
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Corridors can serve many purposes for wildlife, including seasonal migration, finding food and water, and access to mates to maintain genetic diversity. They can also provide ecosystem services such as increased water quality, human benefits like recreation, and advantages for agriculture such as pollination, pest control, and erosion protection.
While many natural corridors still exist, the rapid increase in human development means that, more and more, humans need to proactively design and protect corridors. Because corridors can potentially serve so many purposes, the design of corridors must consider many factors to increase the chance that connectivity goals will be achieved. We want the corridor to provide both a “move-through” habitat and also be wide enough for a “live-in” habitat for multiple species. The space should offer key resources like edible plants, water, and host plants for butterflies. If facilitating the movement of a specific species or community is the focus, their habitat preferences, dispersal behavior, and other life-history features should be considered in the design process. Location, of course, is key. Corridors should be designed to buffer against edge effects such as household pets, lighting, noise, nest predation, and invasive species. Upland
buffer zones are needed along key riparian corridors to prevent aquatic habitat degradation and to reduce contaminants in streams. When considering the appropriateness of recreation within the corridor, seasonal use by wildlife should be understood. Because corridors may be needed for seasonal migrations, human activities may be incompatible with species during migration but are otherwise acceptable. A critical question is how wide corridors should be to meet conservation objectives. The rule of thumb is that a width of 2 km is appropriate when the corridor is intended to connect protected areas such as National Parks up to 80 km apart in a landscape likely to experience impact from development in the future (Beier
Importantly, the well-designed corridor should enable species to respond to climatic changes. A few different approaches to designing corridors can help species move or adapt. None of them are perfect, but they all offer some improvement over traditional approaches that ignore climate change. One popular approach is modeling current species distribution and their future distribution, using climate change projections, and then designing corridors linking current and future habitat patches. We want the corridor to provide both a “move-through” habitat and also be wide enough for a “live-in” habitat for multiple species. The space should offer key resources like edible plants, water, and host plants for butterflies. If facilitating the movement of a specific species or community is the focus, their habitat preferences, dispersal behavior, and other life-history features should be considered in the design process. Location, of course, is key. Corridors should be designed to buffer against edge effects such as household pets, lighting, noise, nest predation, and invasive species. Upland buffer zones are needed along key riparian corridors to prevent aquatic habitat degradation and to reduce contaminants in streams.