Identification of critical habitat corridor patches by cut node ranking

Abstract

Graph-theoretic approaches are increasingly popular in the representation and analysis of ecological networks, acting as a complement to traditional techniques, particularly to perform connectivity analysis. Local network indices are useful to identify portions of an ecological network that are worth inspecting, such as bottlenecks. However, the simple identification of cut nodes may turn out to be insufficient. By providing criteria to rank identified cut nodes, land managers are able to assess priorities for further local analysis.