European regions as providers of structural riparian corridors

Riparian zones are of utmost importance in providing a range of ecological and societal services. Among these, their role in maintaining landscape connectivity through ecological corridors for animals and plants is of major interest from conservation and management perspectives. This paper describes a methodology to identify and prioritize European regions as providers of structural (physical) riparian corridors based on the use of continental geo-information datasets. Physical riparian connectors among core habitat patches are identified through Morphological Spatial Pattern Analysis, a novel segmentation technique. A multi-scale approach is followed considering different edge distances to discriminate core and peripheral habitat for a range of hypothetical species. Prioritization is performed using a simple set of indices that take into account degree of landscape environmental pressure and presence of land protection schemes. An example for environmental reporting is carried out using European administrative regions and major rivers to summarize results. The approach is based on freely available software and simple metrics which can be integrated with information from functional connectivity indices to conduct wider assessments.

CLERICI Nicola;  VOGT Peter; 

2014-08-01

ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV

JRC70769

0303-2434,   

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jag.2012.07.001,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC70769,   

10.1016/j.jag.2012.07.001,