Journal
LANDSCAPE ECOLOGY
Volume 32, Issue 1, Pages 115-130Publisher
SPRINGER
DOI: 10.1007/s10980-016-0436-0
Keywords
Connectivity; Hierarchy; Landscape resilience; Network analysis; Percolation; Playa wetland; Redundancy
Funding
- U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
- Great Plains Landscape Conservation Cooperative research Grant
- National Science Foundation Macrosystems Grant [1240646]
- Division of Biology at Kansas State University
- Direct For Computer & Info Scie & Enginr
- Division of Computing and Communication Foundations [1240646] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- Emerging Frontiers
- Direct For Biological Sciences [1340646] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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Playa wetlands are the primary habitat for numerous wetland-dependent species in the Southern Great Plains of North America. Plant and wildlife populations that inhabit these wetlands are reciprocally linked through the dispersal of individuals, propagules and ultimately genes among local populations. To develop and implement a framework using network models for conceptualizing, representing and analyzing potential biological flows among 48,981 spatially discrete playa wetlands in the Southern Great Plains. We examined changes in connectivity patterns and assessed the relative importance of wetlands to maintaining these patterns by targeting wetlands for removal based on network centrality metrics weighted by estimates of habitat quality and probability of inundation. We identified several distinct, broad-scale sub networks and phase transitions among playa wetlands in the Southern Plains. In particular, for organisms that can disperse > 2 km a dense and expansive wetland sub network emerges in the Southern High Plains. This network was characterized by localized, densely connected wetland clusters at link distances (h) > 2 km but < 5 km and was most sensitive to changes in wetland availability (p) and configuration when h = 4 km, and p = 0.2-0.4. It transitioned to a single, large connected wetland system at broader spatial scales even when the proportion of inundated wetland was relatively low (p = 0.2). Our findings suggest that redundancy in the potential for broad and fine-scale movements insulates this system from damage and facilitates system-wide connectivity among populations with different dispersal capacities.
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