Connectivity Analysis Toolkit

The Connectivity Analysis Toolkit (CAT) combines several new connectivity analysis and linkage mapping methods in an accessible user interface. The CAT software especially facilitates calculation of ‘centrality’ metrics. Centrality metrics evaluate paths between all possible pairwise combinations of sites on a landscape to rank the contribution of each site to facilitating ecological flows across the network of sites. Computational advances now allow application of centrality metrics to landscapes represented as continuous gradients of habitat quality. This avoids the binary classification of landscapes into patch and matrix required by patch-based analyses of connectivity. It also allows one to avoid the focus on delineating paths between individual pairs of core areas characteristic of most corridor- or linkage-mapping methods of connectivity analysis. However, you can use the CAT for such patch-to-patch linkage mapping as well.

This software is freely available. Please visit:

www.connectivitytools.org

to learn more and download the software.