School of Forestry and Merriam-Powell Center for Environmental Research, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, Arizona 86011-5018, USA.
Ecol Appl. 2012 Jan;22(1):87-103. doi: 10.1890/11-0213.1.
Least-cost modeling for focal species is the most widely used method for designing conservation corridors and linkages. However, these linkages have been based on current species' distributions and land cover, both of which will change with large-scale climate change. One method to develop corridors that facilitate species' shifting distributions is to incorporate climate models into their design. But this approach is enormously complex and prone to error propagation. It also produces outputs at a grain size (km2) coarser than the grain at which conservation decisions are made. One way to avoid these problems is to design linkages for the continuity and interspersion of land facets, or recurring landscape units of relatively uniform topography and soils. This coarse-filter approach aims to conserve the arenas of biological activity rather than the temporary occupants of those arenas. In this paper, we demonstrate how land facets can be defined in a rule-based and adaptable way, and how they can be used for linkage design in the face of climate change. We used fuzzy c-means cluster analysis to define land facets with respect to four topographic variables (elevation, slope angle, solar insolation, and topographic position), and least-cost analysis to design linkages that include one corridor per land facet. To demonstrate the flexibility of our procedures, we designed linkages using land facets in three topographically diverse landscapes in Arizona, USA. Our procedures can use other variables, including soil variables, to define land facets. We advocate using land facets to complement, rather than replace, existing focal species approaches to linkage design. This approach can be used even in regions lacking land cover maps and is not affected by the bias and patchiness common in species occurrence data.
最经济成本建模是设计保护走廊和连接点的最广泛使用的方法。然而，这些连接点是基于当前物种的分布和土地覆盖，而这两者都将随着大规模气候变化而改变。一种开发有利于物种分布转移的走廊的方法是将气候模型纳入其设计中。但是这种方法非常复杂，容易产生误差传播。它产生的输出粒度（平方公里）也比保护决策的粒度更粗。避免这些问题的一种方法是为土地特征的连续性和散布设计连接点，或者说是相对均匀地形和土壤的反复出现的景观单元。这种粗滤方法旨在保护生物活动的舞台，而不是那些舞台的临时居住者。在本文中，我们展示了如何以基于规则和可适应的方式定义土地特征，以及如何在面对气候变化时将其用于连接点设计。我们使用模糊 c 均值聚类分析来定义土地特征，这些特征与四个地形变量（海拔、坡度角、太阳辐射和地形位置）有关，然后使用最小成本分析设计包含每个土地特征的一个走廊的连接点。为了展示我们的程序的灵活性，我们在美国亚利桑那州的三个地形多样的景观中使用土地特征设计了连接点。我们的程序可以使用其他变量，包括土壤变量，来定义土地特征。我们主张使用土地特征来补充，而不是取代现有的焦点物种方法来设计连接点。即使在缺乏土地覆盖地图的地区，这种方法也可以使用，而且不受物种出现数据中常见的偏差和不均匀性的影响。
