The promising combination of a remote sensing approach and landscape connectivity modelling at a fine scale in urban planning

Abstract

Urban landscapes are rapid changing ecosystems with diverse urban forms that impede the movement of organisms. Therefore, designing and modelling ecological networks to identify biodiversity reservoirs and their corridors are crucial aspects of land management in terms of population persistence and survival. However, the land cover/use maps used for landscape connectivity modelling can lack information in such a highly complex environment. In this context, remote sensing approaches are gaining interest for the development of accurate land cover/use maps. We tested the efficiency of an object-based classification using open-source projects and free images to identify vegetation strata at a very fine scale and evaluated its contribution to landscape connectivity modelling. We compared different spatial and thematic resolutions from existing databases and object-based image analyses in three French cities. Our results suggested that this remote sensing approach produced reliable land cover maps to differentiate artificial areas, tree vegetation and herbaceous vegetation. Land cover maps enhanced with the remote sensing products substantially changed the structural connectivity indices, showing an improvement up to four times the proportion of herbaceous and tree vegetation. In addition, functional connectivity indices evaluated for several forest species were mainly impacted for medium dispersers in quantitative (metrics) and qualitative (corridors) estimations. Thus, the combination of this reproductible remote sensing approach and landscape connectivity modelling at a very fine scale provides new insights into the characterisation of ecological networks for conservation planning.