Restoration and Conservation of Priority Areas of Caatinga’s Semi-Arid Forest Remnants Can Support Connectivity within an Agricultural Landscape

Andrés A. Salazar, Eduardo C. Arellano, Andrés Muñoz-Sáez, Marcelo D. Miranda, Fabiana Oliveira da Silva, Natalia B. Zielonka, Liam P. Crowther, Vinina Silva-Ferreira, Patricia Oliveira-Reboucas and Lynn V. Dicks
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Andrés A. Salazar: Facultad de Agronomía e Ingeniería Forestal, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago 7830436, Chile
Eduardo C. Arellano: Facultad de Agronomía e Ingeniería Forestal, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago 7830436, Chile
Andrés Muñoz-Sáez: Center of Applied Ecology and Sustainability (CAPES), Santiago 7820244, Chile
Marcelo D. Miranda: Facultad de Agronomía e Ingeniería Forestal, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago 7830436, Chile
Fabiana Oliveira da Silva: Departamento de Educação em Ciências Agrarias e da Terra, Universidade Federal de Sergipe, Campus do Sertão (UFS), Nossa Senhora da Glória 49680-000, Brazil
Natalia B. Zielonka: School of Biological Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK
Liam P. Crowther: School of Biological Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK
Vinina Silva-Ferreira: Colegiado de Ciências Biológicas, Universidade Federal do Vale do São Francisco, Petrolina 56300-990, Brazil
Patricia Oliveira-Reboucas: Departamento de Tecnologia e Ciências Sociais, Universidade do Estado da Bahia—Campus III (UNEB), Juazeiro 48904-711, Brazil
Lynn V. Dicks: School of Biological Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK

Land, 2021, vol. 10, issue 6, 1-20

Abstract: Land-use and land-cover (LULC) changes are major drivers of biodiversity loss in semi-arid regions, such as the Caatinga biome located in the Northeast of Brazil. We investigated landscape dynamics and fragmentation in an area of the São Francisco Valley in the Brazilian Caatinga biome and measured the effect of these dynamics on ecological, functional and structural connectivity over a 33-year period (1985–2018). We calculated landscape connectivity indices based on graph theory to quantify the effect of further agricultural expansion on ecological connectivity at the landscape scale. We used a multicriteria decision analysis that integrates graph-based connectivity indices at the habitat patch scale, combined with an index of human disturbance to identify patches that, if conserved and restored, preserve the connectivity of the landscape most effectively. In the period studied, agriculture increased at a rate of 2104 ha/year, while native Caatinga vegetation decreased at a rate of 5203 ha/year. Both dense and open Caatinga became more fragmented, with the number of fragments increasing by 85.2% and 28.6%, respectively, whilst the average fragment size decreased by 84.8% and 6.1% for dense and open Caatinga, respectively. If agriculture patches were to expand by a 300 m buffer around each patch, the overall ecological connectivity could be reduced by 6–15%, depending on the species’ (small- to mid-size terrestrial vertebrates) mobility characteristics for which the connectivity indices were calculated. We provided explicit spatial connectivity and fragmentation information for the conservation and restoration of the Caatinga vegetation in the studied area. This information helps with conservation planning in this rapidly changing ecosystem.

Keywords: land-use and land-cover change; landscape connectivity; agriculture; conservation planning; landscape restoration; Caatinga biome (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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