Getting started

ekokrati.graph is a hosted cloud service — no installation required.

Your first analysis

1. Prepare your habitat patches

ekokrati.graph accepts three input formats:

For GeoPackage and shapefile, you need a polygon layer where each polygon is one habitat patch. Patch area is read from the geometry — no area column is required.

CRS requirement — ekokrati.graph measures all distances in metres, so your file must use a metric projected CRS. Common choices: SWEREF99TM (EPSG:3006), UTM zones (e.g. EPSG:32633), national metric grids. Geographic CRS such as WGS84 (EPSG:4326, degrees) and projected CRS in other units (e.g. US State Plane in feet) are rejected with an error message.

To check or convert in QGIS: right-click the layer → Layer CRS to inspect; Vector → Data Management → Reproject Layer to convert.

For nodes + links, see the Conefor file format documentation.

2. Set dispersal parameters

Two parameters define the dispersal scenario:

• Distances — the dispersal distances to analyse, in metres. A list of values gives one result per distance. Typical starting point: 300, 1000, 3000.
• Dispersal probability — the probability that an individual disperses the stated distance. Default: 0.5 (50% chance of crossing the threshold distance).

See Parameters for the full reference and Dispersal kernel for the ecological background.

3. Run the analysis

Click Submit (or Run analysis from within a case). The job is queued and runs on the server. For a landscape with a few hundred patches the analysis typically completes in under a minute.

4. Explore results

Once the job completes you are taken to the map viewer. The key outputs are:

• dPC — the patch importance index. Higher dPC = more important patch. Patches are coloured by dPC on the map.
• EC(PC) — the equivalent connected area of the landscape, in the same units as your input geometry. Shown in the summary panel for each distance.
• dPC components — flux, connector, and intra contributions to each patch's importance. Available in the downloaded results.

See Methods for what these numbers mean ecologically.

5. Scenario analysis

To assess the impact of removing or modifying patches:

1. From the map viewer, open the Edit tab
2. Enable edit mode and click patches or edges to mark them for removal
3. Give the scenario a name and click Queue scenario →
4. You are taken back to the case view — a spinner shows the job is running
5. When the job completes the scenario appears as a new network in the case
6. Open it with view or map to see ΔEC(PC)% and patch importance changes

The scenario runs as a background job, so you can navigate freely or queue additional scenarios while it runs.

Next steps

• Parameters — tune your analysis
• Methods — understand what ekokrati.graph computes