An alternative approach to establishing ecological connectivity in an urban environment

The significance of conserving biodiversity in Australia, including native fauna and flora species, is increasingly being recognised by the scientific community. Ecological connectivity assists with theis conservation. Ecological connectivity is associated with the key features of the landscape which facilitate the movement of species and in turn can enhance the biodiversity. While ecological connectivity has been studied frequently in the Greater Melbourne area to meet various objectives, there is still lacking a comprehensive and effective approach to investigate the ecological connectivity for all the species which are influenced by the changes in this urban area. This paper presents a multi-species approach for investigating ecological connectivity in Metropolitan Melbourne. The paper begins by exploring the significance of ecological connectivity in urban areas. The focus is then on the various approaches for addressing ecological connectivity to establish the fundamentals of the new approach. Modeling of habitat networks based on graph theory, for selected target species, is at the core of the research. The connectivity analysis for each graph model, the overlaying of the graph models and the detection of gaps in the networks, the restoration proposals for the gaps in the networks are different step towards a comprehensive analysis of the ecological connectivity. The resulting approach is believed to lead to a more practical and integrated study of connectivity for the planning of future Melbourne landscapes in order to support biodiversity.