Autor
- Kristian Rubiano
- Luigi Boschetti
- Marius Bottin
Post-agreement acceleration of habitat loss and landscape connectivity decline in and around Colombian protected areas Artículo académico
Perfil
Resumen
- Protected areas (PAs) are increasingly exposed to land-use pressures that erode habitat and landscape connectivity. In Colombia, rapid socio-ecological changes following the 2016 peace agreement marked a major territorial and governance transition and have been associated with heightened habitat loss in and around PAs, yet the magnitude and spatial configuration of habitat and connectivity change across the Colombian System of National Natural Parks remain insufficiently quantified. In this work, we combined the MapBiomas Colombia v2.0 land-use/land-cover dataset with the equivalent connected area index to evaluate deforestation, loss of natural non-forest vegetation (NNFV), and landscape connectivity dynamics for 50 PAs and their immediate surroundings (0–10 km buffers), and broader surroundings (10–20 km buffers) across two periods bracketing the peace agreement (2009–2016 and 2016–2023). We found that deforestation and NNFV loss intensified after 2016 across most regions, with particularly pronounced signals in the Andes–Amazon transition. Overall, landscape connectivity declined across all zones and periods. Within PAs, reductions were comparatively modest, and most habitat remained connected by 2023, suggesting some persistence of internal structural integrity. In surrounding buffers, declines were stronger and not fully explained by habitat amount alone, as connectivity fell faster than area loss, indicating stronger configuration effects and increasing fragmentation of natural-vegetation networks. Taken together, these results suggest that the post-agreement period coincided with intensified habitat and disproportionate connectivity erosion in landscapes surrounding PAs. By extending national-scale monitoring through 2023 and, most importantly, by evaluating how habitat-loss trajectories translated into connectivity outcomes across 50 strictly PAs and two surrounding buffer bands, this study provides an updated basis for identifying where habitat conversion and isolation pressures are most strongly concentrated.
autores
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http://vivoweb.org/ontology/core#FacultyMemberClerici, Nicola
fecha de publicación
- 2026-5-1
Área temática
Edición
- 8