Connectivity patterns and processes along a gradient of European landscapes with woody vegetation and spatial heterogeneity

WOODNET aims at providing innovative spatially-explicit tools for connectivity analysis along a range of landscapes from forest and shrubland to agricultural landscapes where woody vegetation elements play a key role for conservation or service delivery. Novel satellite images at different resolutions, permitting to describe the internal structure of landscape elements, will produce improved resistance maps, considering landscape characteristics at different scales, and supported by species empirical data and models of habitat suitability, resource selection and landscape genetics. New connectivity models based on a diversity of possible pathways for species movements through landscapes will be produced. WOODNET also considers the effect of landscape legacies (past connectivity) on current species distribution. The biological models are diverse, from bears and lynx for large landscapes dominated by forests or shrublands to beetles, plants, birds and damselflies for landscapes characterized by hedgerows. We will provide new tools for enhancing connectivity analysis of a diversity of functional networks, together with an evaluation of the synergies and antagonisms among them. We will, for arable crops, study how landscape connectivity drives the distribution of pest and beneficial arthropods and the associated (dis)services. The project also discusses science-policy interface and legal connectivity issues, focusing on how law may integrate both connectivity science, stakeholders knowledge and scientific uncertainty to inform green infrastructure (GI) policy and provide for adaptive management. This is an important point for discussion with stakeholders. We will decipher the different sources of scientific uncertainties, and their consequences on the design of the legal framework of GBIs. The involvement of stakeholders at different scales will permit to further discuss the links between research design and its outputs on GBIs implementation and management.