Habitat connectivity analysis for conservation implications in an urban area

In urbanized areas, habitat loss and fragmentation resulting from urban growth and human activities may threaten the biological diversity. It is essential to maintain the connectivity in some isolated and fragmented habitat patches. In 2005, the orchard-based conservation with the legal binding was implemented in Shenzhen to mitigate the ecological threats from forest destruction and to protect the ecological diversity. It is critical to evaluate the efficiency of orchard habitat from the species’ perspective for providing the reference for the habitat management. Based on graph-theoretic methods, we compared the habitats with or without orchards and evaluated the contribution of orchards to the whole network connectivity and its three fractions (intra, flux and connector), and then analyzed the species that could benefit the most from the habitat supplement. We identified the important landscape elements for serving the prioritized conservation. The results showed that orchard-based conservation was an efficient way in maintaining the functional connectivity, which mainly contributed to the intrapatch connectivity and species dispersal flux. The value of orchard incorporation was strongly related with the dispersal ability of threatened species. Our findings indicated that the orchard conservation would be more valuable for species with relatively weak dispersal abilities. We showed the key patches and links that most contribute to uphold functional connectivity in the reserve network. We believe that the assessment based on habitat functional connectivity can effectively serve the practical guidelines of habitat conservation and management in urban areas.