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Large-scale

landscape

features including natural and man-made barriers contribute to

habitat

fragmentation

and

connectivity

, affecting animal communities and posing a threat to

species

' long-term sustainability. Barriers have been proven to affect a wide range of

species

' roaming

behavior

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, dispersal, gene flow, and distribution. Differential effects of barriers may influence the geographic distribution and overlap of

species

, and

consequently

community structure

,

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when

species

coexist in a

landscape

system. Human-caused

habitat

loss and

fragmentation

are frequently cited as critical causes in the current biotic homogeneity.

Many

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empirical research now

support

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the notion that

such

processes

affect a wide range of animal

species

. Many vertebrate

species

have seen consistent population declines

as a result

of anthropogenic

landscape

fragmentation

. Conservationists try to maintain or rebuild linkages between residual

habitat

fragments as landscapes throughout the world become increasingly fragmented. Connecting remnant

patches

or protected places like national parks are strips of high-quality

habitat

(corridors).

Landscape

fragmentation

has long been recognized as a hazard to

biodiversity

. Farming techniques, urban development, and the construction of transportation infrastructures are all key contributors. Significant losses in the quantity and size of

habitat

patches

cause wildlife populations to become isolated, increasing the danger of extinction.

Landscape

fragmentation

can be avoided or reduced in several ways: by preserving existing elements (

patches

or corridors) that facilitate movement; by improving the quality of

such

elements,

for example

by increasing their size; or by using restoration measures to create new

habitat

patches

or corridors.

Connectivity

, or the ease with which a

landscape

promotes or hinders movement between resources or habitats, is an important feature of land management for

species

and community protection.

Connectivity

has an impact on demography, encourages dispersal and colonization, preserves genetic variety, improves a

species

' ability to adjust to disturbances and changing climates, and promotes long-term persistence in varied settings.

As a result

, enhancing

landscape

connectedness has been identified as a critical method for minimizing climate change's effects on

biodiversity

. The

fragmentation

of ecosystems, and especially the loss of

connectivity

between different

habitat

areas, is considered to be one of the main impacts on

biodiversity

caused by linear transport infrastructure and is

also

known as the barrier effect to wildlife dispersal movements. Here we describe Circuitscape, a computational tool which applies circuit-theoretic

connectivity

analyses to

landscape

data using large-scale combinatorial and numerical algorithms.

Modeling

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of

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ecological

connectivity

across landscapes is important for understanding a wide range of ecological

processes

, and for achieving environmental management goals

such

as conserving threatened plant and animal populations, predicting infectious disease spread, and maintaining

biodiversity

. Understanding broad-scale ecological

processes

that depend on

connectivity

, and incorporating

connectivity

into conservation planning efforts, requires quantifying how

connectivity

is affected by environmental features.

Thus

, there is a need for efficient and reliable tools that relate

landscape

composition and pattern to

connectivity

for ecological

processes

.