Improving Conservation Techniques Through Graph Theoretic Models

While concerns for local and global ecological issues increase, there is a growing need for the conservation of functioning ecosystems; as land management evolves in scope and emphasis, land managers are in need of new tools. Graph theory, a relatively efficient mathematical modeling approach, has been used for modeling and analyzing an array of networks and as a result proving itself as a potential framework for landscape modeling with its adaptable measures. Through an in-depth review of two unique examples of graph theoretic habitat modeling, we will see how these models compare to the more complex and biologically accurate spatially explicit population models, and what they can tell us about habitats that have had no previous analysis. It will then be seen that graph theoretic modeling approaches are important to habitat conservation research in various ways