Graph models of network behavior in environmental planning

Policies to protect the environment in Europe and in the rest of the world have been adjusted to take into account the network behavior of conglomerates of nature protection areas. Network behavior can emerge from the natural configuration of habitat patches, or be induced by the establishment of habitat corridors. Careful planning is required to protect and improve the network behavior in existing sites; this has prompted researchers to build graph models of ecological networks, and apply complex network analysis to improve the understanding of their features. However, the most common approach is to keep the focus on a single species, meant to be representative of most species within the area under analysis, or especially important with respect to conservation issues. In this paper, data pertaining to land use types found within sites making up the "Natura 2000" ecological network is used to provide a high-level view of the network, and propose a framework for study, in which similarity measures are used as a criterion to suggest guidelines for land management.