Landscape connectivity

Landscape connectivity is the degree to which a landscape facilitates or impedes the movement of organisms, materials, and energy among habitat patches. It is not a property of the landscape alone but a joint property of the landscape and the species that moves through it: a highway is an impermeable barrier to a ground beetle but an irrelevant feature to a soaring hawk. Connectivity can be measured structurally — through the density and arrangement of corridors and stepping-stones — or functionally, through the actual movement rates of organisms, which may be better predicted by graph-theoretic models than by Euclidean distance.

The distinction between structural and functional connectivity is critical for conservation. A landscape that appears well-connected on a map may be functionally fragmented if the corridors are too narrow, too disturbed, or frequented by predators that make them ecological traps. Landscape connectivity is the bridge between landscape ecology and population genetics: it determines gene flow, rescue effects, and the capacity of populations to track shifting climates.