GIS Application in Designing Potential Ecological Corridors

Abstract

Habitat fragmentation has been identified as one of the main cause of wildlife population decline and even extinction. To mitigate the problem, the development of migration corridor routes has been recommended for maintaining landscape connectivity thus preserving habitat for movement of species between the remaining fragments. The thesis proposes the use of biological habitat models in an interactive geographic information system (GIS) environment for a proper scientific corridor design. This will allow spatial analysis of the required information and presentation of results in a spatial manner rather than in a mathematical format only. A GIS process model is developed to assist in the task of delineating suitable habitat patches and the connecting corridors. This was achieved by integrating a wolf habitat suitability model function into a raster GIS, for creating suitability maps, and hence delineating suitable habitat patches. Means of assessing habitats at different scales using variable windows of analysis is described. GIS functions of distance and weighted distance are used to generate a network of potential corridor routes in areas made up of remnant forests separated by barriers like highways, agricultural, and settlement areas. The process model has been depicted with flowcharts showing, input data layers, the GIS procedure performed, and the output data layer that may be used as input to another procedure. An attempt has been made to allow the generation of “what if” scenarios by allowing the user to adjust some of the model variables for aiding the decision-making process.