Landscape connectivity

In landscape ecology, landscape connectivity is, broadly, "the degree to which the landscape facilitates or impedes movement among resource patches". Alternatively, connectivity may be a continuous property of the landscape and independent of patches and paths. Connectivity includes both structural connectivity (the physical arrangements of disturbance and/or patches) and functional connectivity (the movement of individuals across contours of disturbance and/or among patches). Functional connectivity includes actual connectivity (requires observations of individual movements) and potential connectivity in which movement paths are estimated using the life-history data. A similar but different concept proposed by Jacques Baudry, landscape connectedness, refers to structural links between elements of spatial structures of a landscape, which concerns the topology of landscape features and not ecological processes. The concept of "landscape connectivity" was first introduced by Dr. Gray Merriam in 1984. Merriam noted that movement among habitat patches was not merely a function of an organism's attributes, but also, a quality of the landscape elements through which it must move. To emphasize this fundamental interaction in determining a particular movement pathway, Merriam (1984), defined landscape connectivity as "the degree to which absolute isolation is prevented by landscape elements which allow organisms to move among habitat patches." Nine years later, Merriam and colleagues, revised the definition to "the degree to which the landscape impedes or facilitates movement among resource patches. Although this definition has undoubtedly become the most accepted and cited meaning within the scientific literature, many authors have continued to create their own definitions. With et al (1997), presented their interpretation as "the functional relationship among habitat patches, owing to the spatial contagion of habitat and the movement responses of organisms to landscape structure", and Ament et al.