Journal Article

Estimating Fragmentation and Connectivity Patterns of the Temperate Forest in an Avocado-Dominated Landscape to Propose Conservation Strategies

Godínez-Gómez, Oscar, Denvir, Audrey, Latorre-Cárdenas, María Camila, Arima, Eugenio Y., García-Oliva, Felipe, González-Rodríguez, Antonio, Ghilardi, Adrián, Young, Kenneth R.

2023

Overview

The rapid expansion of avocado cultivation in Michoacán, Mexico, is one of the drivers of deforestation. We assessed the degree of fragmentation and functional connectivity of the remaining temperate forest within the Avocado Belt and prioritized patches that contribute the most to connectivity using a network-based approach and modelling different seed and pollen dispersal scenarios, including two types of patch attributes (size and degree of conservation). As landscape transformation in the region is rapid and ongoing, we updated the land-use and land-cover maps through a supervised classification of Sentinel-2 imagery, improving the reliability of our analyses. Temperate forest is highly fragmented within the region: most patches are small (<30 ha), have a reduced core-area (28%), and irregular shapes. The degree of connectivity is very low (0.06), dropping to 0.019 when the degree of conservation of patches was considered. The top 100 ranked patches of forest that support the connectivity of seeds and pollen have different characteristics (i.e., size and topology) that may be considered for implementing conservation and management strategies. Seed dispersal seems to be more threatened by fragmentation than pollen dispersal, and patches that are important for maintaining seed connectivity are embedded in the denser zone of avocado orchards.

• Publisher: MDPI AG
• Subject: Agricultural land / Avocado / avocados / Biodiversity / Conservation / Deciduous forests / Deforestation / degree of connectivity / Dispersion / Distribution / Environmental aspects / Forests / Fragmentation / Habitat fragmentation / habitat-quality / Habitats / Identification and classification / Image classification / land / Land cover / Land use / land use and land cover maps / Landscape / Landscape preservation / landscapes / Measurement / Mexico / Orchards / Patches (structures) / Plant reproduction / Pollen / pollen flow / Reliability analysis / Satellite imaging / seed and pollen dispersal / Seed dispersal / Seeds / structural and functional connectivity / supervised classification / Temperate forests / Topology