Citywide Wildlife Connectivity (feature layer)

The Citywide Wildlife Connectivity Layer is a feature layer that shows the wildlife connectivity of all landscapes across the City of LA. This layer is based on a 30ft resolution raster layer, but was aggregated using the Block Statistics tool to adjust the resolution to represent a more realistic outcome. Thus, it appears to be at a lower than 30ft resolution. This is the first published assessment of high-resolution wall-to-wall connectivity data for the City of Los Angeles. This layer was created using Omniscape, modeling software that produces maps of omni-directional habitat connectivity. Omniscape relies on two inputs: a source layer and a resistance layer. LASAN used the Urban Habitat Quality layer as the source data and the Wildlife Movement Resistance layer as the resistance layer. Omniscape uses circuit theory to assess movement pathways, taking into account features, like roads, that serve as barriers to wildlife movement. Staff followed the methodology described in McRae et al. (2016) to calculate the normalized current flow and define scoring categories. Every pixel across the City was classified as an impermeable barrier, impeded, pinch-point, channeled, or diffuse, with impermeable barriers exhibiting extremely limited potential for connectivity, and diffuse areas, being the best, most desirable conditions for unrestricted wildlife movement and habitat connectivity. ───────────────────┬───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┬──────────┬───── Classification │Description │Raw Values│Score ───────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼──────────┼───── Impermeable barrier│Areas with features that severely restrict wildlife movement movement (e.g., freeways, major roads)│<0.4 │0 ───────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼──────────┼───── Impeded │Areas with restricted movement (e.g., roads, highly urban landscapes) │0.4-0.8 │1 ───────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼──────────┼───── Pinch-points │Bottlenecks where further habitat loss could restrict movement │>2 │2 ───────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼──────────┼───── Channeled │Bottlenecks that allow concentrated wildlife movement │1.6-2 │3 ───────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼──────────┼───── Intensified │Areas that serve as important linkages for wildlife movement │1.2-1.6 │4 ───────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼──────────┼───── Diffuse │Areas where movement is unrestricted │0.8-1.2 │5 ───────────────────┴───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┴──────────┴───── See the information on metric 1.1e in the LA Biodiversity Index Baseline Report for more information. The Urban Habitat Quality layer and the Wildlife Movement Resistance layer were created by Dr. Isaac Brown. The Omniscape modeling showcased here was performed by LASAN staff (Peggy Nguyen and Michelle Barton). Special thanks to GIS staff from the Department of City Planning for providing valuable guidance throughout the effort.