This metric approximates the potential for connectivity between natural habitat patches (e.g., protected areas, nodes) used to identify locations that facilitate the movement of multiple species and maintain ecological processes. Here the linkage potential for riparian features is used to evaluate the quality of the landscape between protected area nodes and is represented as linkage potential surfaces. The riparian permeability values used as input for these linkage pathways were derived using the enduring physiographic features of ruggedness, topography, and landforms in the M2B study area. We created the riparian permeability surface based on a terrain ruggedness index (Riley et al. 1999), modified to include topographically-defined creek corridors, and two landform types (valley bottom and narrow valley bottom; Theobald et al. 2015) to represent landscape features with zero cost for terrestrial wildlife movement. We then used the inverse of the riparian permeability surface as a cost layer in Linkage Mapper to generate linkage pathways (truncated at a cost-weighted distance of 1,000) between perimeters of up to three adjacent CPAD+ protected areas. Locations with a high value facilitate terrestrial, aquatic, and riparian resource flow.