SURVEY OF METHODS FOR DESIGNING ECOLOGICAL CORRIDORS USING GIS: A SYSTEMATIC LITERATURE REVIEW

Abstract

The urban expansion has been causing forest fragmentation processes. This fact motivates the need to implement ecological corridors (EC) to mitigate these negative environmental impacts. Given the need, this study conducted a systematic bibliographic review to identify methods for the development of EC, aiming to identify the Geographic Information System (GIS), the main extensions, the country, the target species, and the year of publications. The review was carried out for the studies from 2009 to 2021 using the databases: ScienceDirect, Scopus, Springer Link, and Web of Science. In total, 530 articles were selected, of which 39 remained after the exclusion system. The most used GIS was ArcGIS and the country with the largest number of studies was China. Among the models used, the least cost path was highlighted. It was also verified that there is a lack of studies that use GIS to propose an EC, in addition to being possible to verify that some of these projects studied do not present all the necessary elements, impeding their reproducibility.