cs_pairwise: Pairwise Circuitscape Analysis

In circuitscaper: 'Circuitscape' and 'Omniscape' Connectivity Analysis via 'Julia'

Pairwise Circuitscape Analysis

Description

Compute pairwise effective resistances and cumulative current flow between all pairs of focal nodes.

Usage

cs_pairwise(
  resistance,
  locations,
  resistance_is = "resistances",
  four_neighbors = FALSE,
  avg_resistances = FALSE,
  short_circuit = NULL,
  included_pairs = NULL,
  write_voltage = FALSE,
  cumulative_only = TRUE,
  source_strengths = NULL,
  solver = "cg+amg",
  output_dir = NULL,
  verbose = FALSE
)

Arguments

resistance	A terra::SpatRaster or file path. The resistance (or conductance) surface. Higher values represent greater resistance to movement. Use the resistance_is argument if your surface represents conductances instead.
locations	Focal node locations, provided as any of: A terra::SpatRaster (or raster::RasterLayer) with positive integer IDs identifying each node. Cells with value 0 or NA are not treated as focal nodes. A file path to a raster file (e.g., .tif, .asc). A two-column matrix or data.frame of x/y coordinates. Each row becomes a focal node, auto-assigned IDs 1, 2, 3, ... in row order. Coordinates are snapped to the nearest cell of the resistance raster.
resistance_is	Character. Whether the resistance surface represents "resistances" (default) or "conductances".
four_neighbors	Logical. Use 4-neighbor (rook) connectivity instead of 8-neighbor (queen). Default FALSE.
avg_resistances	Logical. When using 8-neighbor connectivity, compute the resistance of diagonal connections as the average of the two cells rather than their sum. Default FALSE (Circuitscape default). Ignored when four_neighbors = TRUE.
short_circuit	Optional terra::SpatRaster or file path. Raster identifying short-circuit regions (aka polygons). Cells sharing the same positive integer value are treated as short-circuit regions with zero resistance between them. Default NULL (no short-circuit regions).
included_pairs	Optional character file path. A text file specifying which pairs of focal nodes to include or exclude from analysis. See the Circuitscape documentation for the file format. Default NULL (all pairs).
write_voltage	Logical. Write voltage maps. Default FALSE. When TRUE, per-iteration voltage layers (named voltage_1, voltage_2, ...) are included in the output raster.
cumulative_only	Logical. If TRUE (default), only the cumulative current map is returned. If FALSE, per-iteration current layers (named current_1, current_2, ...) are also included. Use with caution for large numbers of focal nodes, as this can produce many layers.
source_strengths	Optional. Variable current injection strengths for each focal node. Can be: A numeric vector with one value per focal node (in the same order as the locations input). Node IDs are assigned 1, 2, 3, ... matching the order. A character file path to a tab-delimited text file with two columns: node ID and strength in amps. Nodes not listed default to 1 amp. Default NULL (all nodes inject 1 amp).
solver	Character. Solver to use: "cg+amg" (default) or "cholmod".
output_dir	Optional character path. If provided, output files persist there. Default NULL uses a temporary directory that is cleaned up automatically.
verbose	Logical. Print Circuitscape solver output. Default FALSE.

Details

Pairwise mode iterates over every unique pair of focal nodes. For each pair, one node is injected with 1 amp of current and the other is connected to ground. The effective resistance between the pair is recorded, and the resulting current flow is accumulated across all pairs into a cumulative current map that highlights important movement corridors.

This is the most common Circuitscape mode and is typically used to quantify connectivity between discrete habitat patches or populations. The resistance matrix can be used as a distance metric in analyses such as isolation by resistance.

Value

A named list with:

current_map

A terra::SpatRaster. By default contains a single cumulative_current layer (current flow summed across all pairs). When cumulative_only = FALSE, additional per-pair layers are included (e.g., current_1_2, current_1_3). When write_voltage = TRUE, per-pair voltage layers are included (e.g., voltage_1_2, voltage_1_3).

resistance_matrix

A symmetric numeric matrix of pairwise effective resistances between focal nodes, with node IDs as row and column names.

References

McRae, B.H. (2006). Isolation by resistance. Evolution, 60(8), 1551–1561. \Sexpr[results=rd]{tools:::Rd_expr_doi("10.1111/j.0014-3820.2006.tb00500.x")}

Circuitscape.jl: https://docs.circuitscape.org/Circuitscape.jl/latest/

See Also

cs_one_to_all(), cs_all_to_one(), cs_advanced(), cs_setup()

Examples

library(terra)
res <- rast(system.file("extdata/resistance.tif", package = "circuitscaper"))
coords <- matrix(c(10, 40, 40, 40, 10, 10, 40, 10), ncol = 2, byrow = TRUE)
result <- cs_pairwise(res, coords, cumulative_only = FALSE)
plot(result$current_map)
result$resistance_matrix

circuitscaper documentation built on April 9, 2026, 5:09 p.m.