A structural equation modeling approach for formalizing and evaluating ecological integrity in terrestrial ecosystems

•A structural model approach to analyze ecological integrity in terrestrial ecosystems is proposed.•This approach uses spatial analysis for deriving a set of indicators of ecological integrity as geographic information.•The approach also combines the application of Structural Equation Models and GIS for exploring complex relationships.•The formative parameters obtained with SEM showed that ecological integrity maintain a high level of latent properties.•Ecological integrity is a functional property that integrates key habitat functions and species interactions.

Ecological integrity is a functional property that integrates habitat functions and species information for maintaining key ecological interactions in predator-prey systems. As a functional property, ecological integrity can be modeled as a latent concept from observable spatial attributes that measure the ecosystem's capacity to provide suitable habitat conditions for apex predators. Ecological integrity is a tri-dimensional concept that stems from “stable”, “concurrent” and “intact” conditions. A theoretical framework and a methodology is presented here for modeling ecological integrity from observable attributes (as GIS layers) to obtain a spatial representation of the integrity condition. From a theoretical framework, the ecological integrity concept is obtained with a structural equation modeling approach, where several other latent variables are obtained for characterizing a hierarchical network of spatial information. Later on, these observable attributes, and several latent modeled variables are translated into sources of geographic information that can be used to monitor changes in the natural remnant areas due to human impacts. When examining the direct, indirect and total effects of habitat loss and fragmentation on ecological integrity, spatial intactness (e.g., the amount of remnant habitat and connectivity) and stability (resistance in the interaction network and mobile links) are the attributes more affected by the pathway effects. The balance of the formative parameters obtained for the model supports the idea that ecosystems that have a high degree of integrity should maintain a high level of stability, self-organization and naturalness. These attributes are achieved when spatial habitat intactness and species interactions are maintained.

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