Improving Urban Habitat Connectivity for Native Birds: Using Least-Cost Path Analyses to Design Urban Green Infrastructure Networks
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MDPI AG
Abstract
Habitat loss and fragmentation are primary threats to biodiversity in urban areas. Least-cost path analyses are commonly used in ecology to identify and protect wildlife corridors and stepping-stone habitats that minimise the difficulty and risk for species dispersing across human-modified landscapes. However, they are rarely considered or used in the design of urban green infrastructure networks, particularly those that include building-integrated vegetation, such as green walls and green roofs. This study uses Linkage Mapper, an ArcGIS toolbox, to identify the least-cost paths for four native keystone birds (kererū, tūī, korimako, and hihi) in Wellington, New Zealand, to design a network of green roof corridors that ease native bird dispersal. The results identified 27 least-cost paths across the central city that connect existing native forest habitats. Creating 0.7 km2 of green roof corridors along these least-cost paths reduced cost-weighted distances by 8.5–9.3% for the kererū, tūī, and korimako, but there was only a 4.3% reduction for the hihi (a small forest bird). In urban areas with little ground-level space for green infrastructure, this study demonstrates how least-cost path analyses can inform the design of building-integrated vegetation networks and quantify their impacts on corridor quality for target species in cities.Description
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4101 Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation, 4102 Ecological Applications, 33 Built Environment and Design, 41 Environmental Sciences, 3301 Architecture, 15 Life on Land, 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities, 0502 Environmental Science and Management, 3301 Architecture, 3304 Urban and regional planning, 4104 Environmental management
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Land, ISSN: 2073-445X (Print); 2073-445X (Online), MDPI AG, 12(7), 1456-1456. doi: 10.3390/land12071456
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© 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).