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As both plant and animal species shift their ranges in response to a changing climate, maintaining connectivity between present habitat and suitable habitat in the future will become increasingly important to ensure lasting protection for biodiversity. Because the temporal period commensurate with planning for mid‐century change is multi‐generational for most species, connectivity designed to facilitate climate adaptation requires pathways with 'stepping‐stones' between current and future habitat. These areas should have habitats suitable not only for dispersal, but for all aspects of species lifecycles. We integrated present‐day land use, topographic diversity, and projections of shifting climate regimes into a single connectivity modeling approach to identify pathways for mid‐century shifts in species ranges. Using Omniscape we identified climate linkages, or areas important for climate change‐driven movement, as the areas with more current flow than would be expected in the absence of climate considerations. This approach identified connectivity potential between natural lands in the present climate and natural lands with future analogous climate following topo‐climatically diverse routes. We then translated the model output into a strategic framework to improve interpretation and to facilitate a more direct connection with conservation action. Across modified landscapes, pathways important to climate‐driven movement were highly coincident with the last remaining present‐day linkages, reinforcing their importance. Across unfragmented lands, the presence of climate‐adapted pathways helped inform the prioritization of conservation actions in areas where multiple connectivity options still exist. Many climate linkages follow major watercourses along elevational gradients, highlighting the importance of protecting or managing for these natural linear pathways that provide movement routes for climate adaptation. By integrating enduring landscape features with climate projections and present‐day land uses, our approach reveals "no‐regrets" pathways to plan for a connected landscape in an uncertain future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

First, Venter et al. ([4]) visually overlay the 2009 human footprint (HFP) "no pressure" areas (Venter et al., [5]) with HM zero values and notes high incongruence. Areas are in blue where HFP = 0 and HM /= 0; yellow where HM = 0 and HFP /= 0; and red where HFP = 0 and (i) HM = 0; (ii) HM <= 0.0018 (the median value in HFP = 0), (iii) HM <= 0.10 (the median HM value globally and threshold used for "low modified" lands in Kennedy et al., [2]). Despite differences in the spatial distributions between HM and HFP maps at finer scales (Figure map insets), the correlation of land modification patterns remain fairly similar at coarse scales (Kennedy et al., [2]). [Extracted from the article]

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An important issue in cartography and GIS is determining the appropriate resolution or cell size when converting vector data to raster. The general consensus is to make the cell size as small as possible to resolve geographic features and provide the most accurate estimates of measurements. Finer resolution results in more accurate estimates of polygon area; however, the raster data structure introduces an artifact that causes errors in the estimation of the length of linear features and of the perimeter of polygon features to increase with increasing resolution. Over-estimation as high as 41 percent is theoretically possible and was found to be around 26 percent for representative polygon maps. A method is described that uses a correction coefficient to reduce overestimation error to less than 3 percent., Introduction A fundamental issue in cartography and geographic information systems (GIS) is determining the appropriate resolution (or cell size) to represent geographic features when using a raster data structure. Most [...]

Context: Projected increases in human population size are expected to increase forest loss and fragmentation in the next century at the expense of forest-dwelling species.Objectives: We estimated landscape carrying capacity (Nk) for Ovenbirds in urban, suburban, exurban, and rural areas for the years 2000 and 2050, and compared changes in Nk with changes in occupancy probability.Methods: Maximum clique analysis, a branch of mathematical graph theory, was used to estimate landscape carrying capacity, the maximum potential number of territories a given landscape is capable of supporting (Nk). We used occupancy probability maps as inputs for calculating Ovenbird Nk in the northeastern USA and a spatially explicit growth model to forecast future development patterns in 2050. We compared occupancy probability with estimates of Nk for urban, suburban, exurban, and rural areas for the years 2000 and 2050.Results: In response to human population growth and development, Ovenbird Nk was predicted to decrease 23% in urban landscapes, 28% in suburban landscapes, 43% in exurban landscapes, and 20% in rural landscapes. These decreases far exceeded decreases in mean occupancy probabilities that ranged between 2 and 5% across the same development categories. Thus, small decreases in occupancy probability between 2000 and 2050 translated to much larger decreases in Nk.Conclusions: For the first time, our study compares occupancy probability with a species population metric, Nk, to assess the impact of future development. Maximum clique analysis is a tool that can be used to estimate Nk and inform landscape management and communication with stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]