Quantifying cross-scale patch contributions to spatial connectivity

Context Connectivity between habitat patches is vital for ecological processes at multiple scales. Traditional metrics do not measure the scales at which individual habitat patches contribute to the overall ecological connectivity of the landscape. Connectivity has previously been evaluated at several different scales based on the dispersal capabilities of particular organisms, but these approaches are data-heavy and conditioned on just a few species. Objectives Our objective was to improve cross-scale measurement of connectivity by developing and testing a new landscape metric, cross-scale centrality. Methods Cross-scale centrality (CSC) integrates over measurements of patch centrality at different scales (hypothetical dispersal distances) to quantify the cross-scale contribution of each individual habitat patch to overall landscape or seascape connectivity. We tested CSC against an independent metapopulation simulation model and demonstrated its potential application in conservation planning by comparison to an alternative approach that used individual dispersal data. Results CSC correlated significantly with total patch occupancy across the entire landscape in our metapopulation simulation, while being much faster and easier to calculate. Standard conservation planning software (Marxan) using dispersal data was weaker than CSC at capturing locations with high cross-scale connectivity. Conclusions Metrics that measure pattern across multiple scales are much faster and more efficient than full simulation models and more rigorous and interpretable than ad hoc incorporation of connectivity into conservation plans. In reality, connectivity matters for many different organisms across many different scales. Metrics like CSC that quantify landscape pattern across multiple different scales can make a valuable contribution to multi-scale landscape measurement, planning, and management.