Client: Royal Botanical Gardens, Implementing partner for the Cootes to Escarpment EcoPark System

Year: 2020, 2023-2024

Focus Area: Ecosystem Services (Habitat Connectivity)

Tools: SyncroSim, omniscape SyncroSim, Linkage Mapper

 

Project Overview

Protecting and restoring habitat connectivity is a widespread strategy for achieving biodiversity conservation. Greater habitat connectivity means that wildlife can move between suitable habitat patches and gain access to the best available mates, nesting sites, and food resources. Habitat connectivity is also important to maintain genetic diversity within wildlife populations and to facilitate seasonal and climate-driven migrations across the landscape.

The goal of this wildlife corridor mapping study was to support biodiversity conservation and management activities in the Cootes to Escarpment EcoPark System by identifying habitat patches and movement corridors that promote terrestrial habitat connectivity. The Cootes to Escarpment EcoPark System area is one of Canada’s biodiversity hotspots, a complex landscape of protected lands, open space, urban development, and other uses at the western end of Lake Ontario, in the Greater Toronto Area (Fig. 1).

During the first phase of the project (2020), we estimated ecological connectivity across the study area at a coarse spatial resolution, and using two complementary connectivity analysis approaches:

1. A generalized approach which identified probable movement corridors for forest- and wetland-dwelling wildlife across the Cootes to Escarpment EcoPark System. We mapped the permeability (or ‘resistance’) of the landscape for animals that avoid unnatural landscape features such as roads and developed land and applied circuit connectivity methods to account for all potential paths across and within the EcoPark System to identify probable movement corridors.
2. A species-specific approach identifying components of connectivity at the species-level (habitat suitability and habitat patch importance for landscape connectivity). Blanding’s turtle, northern short-tailed shrew, and white-tailed deer were selected to reflect the local diversity in terrestrial habitat and connectivity needs. We summarized maps across all species to identify the most important habitat patches for maintaining a connected network of habitat within the EcoPark System based on habitat preferences and dispersal abilities.

The results of the generalized and species-specific connectivity analyses were integrated into a single map that identifies locations within Cootes to Escarpment EcoPark System that could be managed to benefit connectivity for a wide range of species.

The second phase of the project (2023-2024) was supported by Parks Canada Ecological Corridors Pilot Program. During this phase, we refined the species-specific analyses by estimating ecological connectivity at a finer spatial resolution and across two spatial scales:

1. Locally within the EcoPark System, to identify management strategies aimed at improving connectivity through conservation actions such as land acquisition, invasive species removal, habitat restoration, creation of wildlife crossings or barriers, and outreach programs.
2. Regionally to identify important ecological corridors important forthat connecting the EcoPark System to other areas of conservation importance and species habitats across the surrounding region.

These results were combined to measure the cross-scale contributions of the EcoPark System to connectivity (Fig. 2), including (1) its overall value for the movement of species and the flow of ecological processes through the landscape, (2) the delineation of potential corridors of movement through the EcoPark System, and (3) priority areas for wildlife crossing and fencing to mitigate the impact of roads on animal movement.

Finally, we developed a connectivity impact assessment tool for the Cootes to Escarment EcoPark System to help them understand how restoration actions and other management decisions may influence ecological connectivity. This tool (Fig. 3) was built on the commonly used Omniscape model for connectivity analysis and is implemented as an open-source package in SyncroSim, a free software platform that provides a Windows user interface and facilitates scenario management.