Roads are notable and responsible for the loss of biodiversity and disruption of wildlife habitats connectivity. Wildlife crossing structures (WCS) help wildlife move between habitats by connecting fragmented habitats. Their effectiveness is affected by various factors. Here, to identify methods for improving the effectiveness of wildlife crossing structures, we controlled the effect of intrinsic factors, such as size, that are difficult to improve in an already installed area, and then, evaluated the differences in extrinsic factors using 12 landscape characteristics. Our results show that 18 wildlife crossing structures were selected with propensity-score (PS) matching method. The surrounding landscape characteristics differed between high-effectiveness wildlife crossing structures and low-effectiveness wildlife crossing structures. Particularly, there was a significant difference between the ‘statutory protected area’ and the ‘edge’ index of the morphological spatial pattern analysis among the landscape characteristic variables derived within 1 km² of wildlife crossing structures. We empirically demonstrate that characteristics around highly effective WCS, statutory protected areas are widely distributed, and the ratio of edge of MSPA is low (within 1 km²). Therefore, an important outcome of our research is the demonstration that management of WCS itself is important, but conservation of surrounding habitats and landscape management plans are also significant.

Large wildfires cause casualties, ecosystem damage, and property loss. Reducing them requires predicting spread; validating a spread model requires pixel-level time of arrival (ToA) from real fires. Few regions have both such data and an independent reference. We combine polar-orbiting (VIIRS) and geostationary (GOES, Himawari) active-fire detections by kriging to produce ToA inside a known final perimeter with a per-pixel kriging standard deviation. For 29 U.S. wildfires with aerial infrared perimeters, we compared configurations differing in whether geostationary data were added and whether pixel size entered the variance, against an inverse-distance-weighting baseline. With all observations available, differences among configurations were small. In polar-orbiting gaps, configurations using geostationary data reconstructed ToA better, and variance-weighted kriging was best by median. Weighing reconstruction performance and the per-pixel standard deviation, we selected variance-weighted kriging. Applying it to 21 South Korean wildfires ≥ 100 ha, we built a 375 m arrival-time and standard-deviation dataset for 15 events with event-level evaluation information. This is an application, not an independent accuracy validation, and reconstruction stays inside the final perimeter. Even so, the dataset supports pixel-level validation of spread models and analysis of spread drivers where aerial or field observations are unavailable.

The 2025 large-scale forest fire in North Gyeongsang Province (Gyeongbuk) caused habitat fragmentation and disrupted ecological networks. This study quantitatively assessed both structural and functional connectivity loss and derived scientifically grounded restoration priorities. Fire intensity was assessed using Sentinel-2-based dNBR, and connectivity changes before and after the fire were analyzed by integrating MSPA (Morphological Spatial Pattern Analysis) and Omniscape (circuit theory-based model). MSPA captured extreme fragmentation, showing an 84% reduction in core habitats and a 976% increase in isolated patches, but failed to reflect functional movement flows. Omniscape approximated this using circuit theory, quantifying a 60% loss in cumulative current flow within the fire boundary and confirming that structural disconnection led to functional connectivity collapse. The restoration priority assessment (53 patches), based on source–sink theory, identified 14 high-priority patches (66% of total area). These patches were characterized by their adjacency to undamaged external cores, which serve as potential population sources for post-restoration recolonization. Notably, the top-priority areas were identified as key connection points within the national ecological corridor where Juwangsan National Park, the Nakdong Ridge, and Grade 1 Ecological Natural Areas overlap. This study demonstrated that integrating MSPA with Omniscape can simultaneously quantify both morphological fragmentation and functional disconnection caused by forest fires. This framework suggests that restoration planning should consider connectivity with broader ecological networks, in addition to recovering lost habitat area.