STRUCTURAL CONNECTIVITY ANALYSIS IN THE CARPATHIAN ECOREGION: PRELIMINARY STEPS FOR DEVELOPING LANDSCAPE NETWORKS

Landscape and ecosystem preservation represents an integrated approach for conserving healthy and interconnected ecosystems. In order to maintain high-quality habitats and maximising the ecosystem services is crucial to have a good bond between connected areas. On both the Romanian and European levels, the backbone of these interconnected areas is formed by Natura 2000 networks [1] The objectives of our study aim to address the Biodiversity 2030 Directive, which mandates the establishment of a coherent network of protected areas and the legal protection of at least 30% of the terrestrial surface of each EU country [2]. Currently, Romania has 23% of its terrestrial surface under protection. To summarise, our goal is to create a landscape network at the level of the Romanian Carpathian ecoregion using structural connectivity analyses, of course, we will accomplish several secondary objectives before reaching this final goal, such as: identifying and classifying connectors, identifying forest patches favourable to the connectivity of protected areas, and classifying protected areas based on connectivity. To ensure high-quality habitats and maximize ecosystem services, such a network requires strong connections between different areas.