Effects of forest regeneration on landscape connectivity in the state of Rond?nia, Amazon, Brazil

The maintenance of biodiversity in forest environments depends on landscape connectivity; this linkage between forest habitats is directly affected by deforestation. Forest restoration can facilitate the movement of individuals between forest habitats. Thus, through connectivity indices, this study aimed to evaluate the contribution of increased forest regeneration areas to landscape connectivity in the state of Rondonia. Landsat images were utilized for this analysis. The Random Forest algorithm conducted soil classification on the Google Earth Engine platform. Landscape connectivity metrics were calculated, including the Equivalent Connected Area Index (ECA) and the Connectivity Probability Difference (dPC), both computed with GuidosToolbox software. The results revealed that the state of Rondonia showed no significant disparities with the increase in forest regeneration areas in either landscape connectivity metric. The most notable outcome was the heightened importance of connectivity for large nodes and large -sized fragments with the addition of regeneration areas. Therefore, it was concluded that forest regeneration areas contributed to improving connectivity indicators, albeit not notably.