Modeling Habitat Connectivity for the Monarch Butterfly among Protected Areas and its Significance in Conservation
Methodology
In order to address how patches uniquely contribute to habitat connectivity I will evaluate the contribution of each protected area within Michoacán, Mexico (Figure 1), by comparing the three components of connectivity: intra, flux and connector; computed using Conefor software (v. 2.6) and compare protected area importance. This will be calculated under current and future climate projections.
Figure 1: Protected areas within Michoacán, Mexico
It is important to see the big picture of where the parks are located in space and see the varying degree of size and think about how this will relate to how many species it will benefit.
Data were obtained from several sources relevant to the overwintering areas of monarch butterflies. Analyses will be performed using ArcMap 10.2. Three modelling tools will be used in this study: Conefor version 2.2 and 2.6, Linkage Mapper and Maxent. In order to obtain the presence data of monarch butterflies values need to be inputted into an excel spreadsheet and become available as longitude and latitude values and then converted into an ArcGIS point layer shapefile. Each point will represent an observation. All map layers will be clipped to the appropriate area using Michoacán, Mexico outline as a mask. The following data layers will be used in the analysis: