Conservation corridors in the United States: Benefits and planning guidelines

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The landscape of rural America is changing. Wildlife habitats are being conversed to agricultural uses, corridors (linear patches that differ from their surroundings) are removed to expand fields, and urban development spreads across farms, forests, and prairies. The result is a fragmented landscape with fewer, smaller, less-connected patches of wildlife habitat and increasingly-degraded water quality that stresses aquatic ecosystems. The landscape9s capacity to sustain a diversity of plant, animal, and aquatic species is declining at an accelerating rate. The loss of biodiversity has become a national concern. Land use planners are increasingly advocating the use of conservation corridors, including riparian buffers, windbreaks/shelterbelts, filter strips, field borders, and grassed waterways to improve water quality and wildlife habitat. Since many of the ecological functions of conservation corridors operate more efficiently at scales larger than an individual corridor, planning at the watershed scale offers the best opportunity to optimize these functions.