Implementing landscape connectivity assessment for biodiversity management and land-use planning in Alberta

可持续发展是加拿大乃至全球公众的核心价值观。生态可持续性规划不仅要保护土地(包括原生景观和受管理的景观)，还必须确保动物和其他生物可以在保护区之间迁徙，以维持具有适应气候变化潜力的可生存和遗传多样性的种群。连通性是指景观在多大程度上促进了生物体及其基因的这种移动。因此，连通性规划是可持续土地利用规划的一个关键方面：实施和减缓保护区以外的经济发展的方式对于维持生物多样性和生态系统服务至关重要。通过消除实施者确定的障碍，该项目将通过城市和工业发展、高速公路和耕作，在土地利用快速变化的地区实现互联互通规划的整合。这对于可持续的土地利用规划和确保公共投资导致有效维持生物多样性和生态系统服务的保护区网络至关重要。与艾伯塔省生物多样性监测研究所(ABMI)合作，我们的研究团队已经根据人类足迹数据为艾伯塔省开发了一套通用的连通性模型，使用哺乳动物、鸟类、植物、土壤蠕虫、地衣和苔藓的生物多样性监测数据对它们进行了验证，并确定了一个最能代表广泛陆地物种连通性的通用模型。在这些成果的基础上，NSERC联盟项目有三个目标：将连通性评估与规划方法相结合，为实施者建立执行本地连通性评估的内部能力，以及澄清通用连通性地图的解释和限制。拟议的办法可用于显示替代规划情景对连通性的影响，以支持参与式规划进程，在这种进程中，公民团体、土著人民和非政府组织等最终用户参与决策，这些决策以科学为基础，并纳入土著知识和地方观点。

Sustainability is a core value for the public in Canada and globally. Planning for ecological sustainability must go beyond protecting land (including both, native and managed landscapes), it must also ensure that animals and other organisms can move between protected areas, so as to maintain viable and genetically diverse populations with the potential to adapt to climate change. Connectivity refers to the degree to which the landscape facilitates such movement of organisms and their genes. Hence, connectivity planning is a key aspect of sustainable land-use planning: the way in which economic development outside of protected areas is implemented and mitigated is crucial for maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem services. By removing barriers identified by implementers, this project will lead to the integration of connectivity planning in areas undergoing rapid land-use change through urban and industrial development, highways, and cultivation. This is essential for sustainable land-use planning and for ensuring that the public investment leads to a protected area network effective at maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem services. In collaboration with the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute (ABMI), our research team already developed a set of general-purpose connectivity models for the province of Alberta from human footprint data, validated them with biodiversity monitoring data for mammals, birds, plants, soil mites, lichens, and mosses, and identified a general-use model that best represents connectivity for a broad range of terrestrial species. Building on these results, the NSERC Alliance project has three goals: integrating connectivity assessment with planning methods, building in-house capacity for implementers to perform local connectivity assessments, and clarifying the interpretation and limitations of general-use connectivity maps. The proposed approach can be used to visualize the impact of alternative planning scenarios on connectivity to support a participatory planning process, where end-users, such as citizen groups, Indigenous Peoples and NGOs, are involved in making decisions that are grounded in science and incorporate Indigenous knowledge and local perspectives.