Mid-South Connectivity Paths Based on Habitat Conditions
Summary
This data layer maps potential connectivity corridors at the large landscape scale based on an analysis of broadly defined habitats relevant to wildlife action plans in the Mid-South USA. This product is derived from the Mid-South Terrestrial Broadly Defined Habitats Condition Index layer, which is a product of the same project. That layer identified 15 types of terrestrial habitat for wildlife species of concern and the assessed site condition and patch and landscape configuration metrics at 30-meter resolution. The assessment assigns a Condition Index value ranging from 0-14 with zero representing non-habitat land and 14 representing a targeted habitat that meets all assessed condition metrics. This connectivity analysis uses a cost-distance [...]
Summary
This data layer maps potential connectivity corridors at the large landscape scale based on an analysis of broadly defined habitats relevant to wildlife action plans in the Mid-South USA. This product is derived from the Mid-South Terrestrial Broadly Defined Habitats Condition Index layer, which is a product of the same project. That layer identified 15 types of terrestrial habitat for wildlife species of concern and the assessed site condition and patch and landscape configuration metrics at 30-meter resolution. The assessment assigns a Condition Index value ranging from 0-14 with zero representing non-habitat land and 14 representing a targeted habitat that meets all assessed condition metrics. This connectivity analysis uses a cost-distance approach to describe potential connectivity corridors between core areas of highest quality habitat. Core areas were selected by identifying the top ten percent of HUC12 watersheds in terms average Condition Index within zones associated with ecoregions. The 194 resulting cores were classified into four groups based on size (very large, large, medium, small), and cost distance surfaces (using the inverse of the condition index scores) were generated for each group. For each set of cores, three sets of paths were generated using the cost surface layers from each of the other three sets. This process links each core polygon to its nearest neighbor in each of the other three sets of cores by least “cost” with cost representing the highest quality habitat.
