Circuitscape

Those who model the migration of species and the gene flow within the environment, might be requiring a dedicated software for such approaches. In order to achieve connectivity modeling, users must perform a great deal of research, data compilation, GIS analysis and corresponding interpretation.

Circuitscape was developed in order to provide people with the means to model gene flow in the environment and it employs electronic circuit theory algorithms for predicting the movement patterns.

It can also be used for determining genetic differentiation among plant and animal populations in heterogeneous landscapes.

The application uses circuit theory in order to account for the least-cost path approaches, since such an approach considers the effects of all possible pathways across a landscape, simultaneously.

Being deployed as a standalone installed, the application features two components, one that represents the main graphical user interface and the second one being represented by a command-line based console.

People have access to several data types as input and they can select multiple modeling modes: pairwise (which iterates across all the pairs in the focal node file), advanced (that offers activation for the independent sources and grounds), one-to-all and all-to-one.

The last two methods are rarely used and the developer advises people to refer to the documentation in order to obtain more information about them.