Functional connectivity modeling and optimal siting of conservation networks in the Midwest USA

With the rising costs of fossil fuels and recognition of their environmental and human health impacts, wind energy projects have expanded throughout the world. Under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, wind developers must avoid, minimize, and mitigate impacts to listed species. With assistance from the Conservation Fund, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service sought to address potential wind energy impacts in the Midwest USA. To provide ecosystem and landscape contexts for mitigation, we identified key habitat (“core areas”) important to the full suite of native species and ecosystems, and corridors that would allow species dispersal, migration, recolonization, genetic exchange, and climate change adaptation. We identified core areas based on landscape types, focal/surrogate species requirements, and ecoregional differences. Corridors depend on both the composition and spatial arrangement of the landscape, and the movement abilities and landscape preferences of target organisms. We created a Terrestrial Movement Analysis tool to model connectivity for four different ecotypes, each with their own core areas and movement permeabilities. The tool generated random sets of starting locations (each location corresponding to an individual organism) and calculated optimal paths to all other habitat within the organism's dispersal range. This process was executed iteratively; then it summed the random iterations to derive overall landscape connectivity, showing pathway usage, the cost of moving through a corridor (broader than single paths), and overall landscape movement potential. The resulting data can be used for multiple applications.