Kindberg, Jonas
- Department of Wildlife, Fish and Environmental Studies, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
- Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA)
Abstract
Roads have a pervasive multi-faceted influence on ecosystems, including pronounced impacts on wildlife movements. In recognition of the scale-transcending impacts of transportation infrastructure, ecologists have been encouraged to extend the study of barrier impacts from individual roads and animals to networks and populations. In this study, we adopt an analytical representation of road networks as mosaics of landscape tiles, separated by roads. We then adapt spatial capture-recapture analysis to estimate the propensity of wildlife to stay within the boundaries of the road network tiles (RNTs) that hold their activity centres. We fit the model to national non-invasive genetic monitoring data for brown bears Ursus arctos in Sweden and show that bears had up to 73% lower odds of using areas outside the network tile of their home range centre, even after accounting for the effect of natural barriers (major rivers) and the decrease in utilization with increasing distance from a bear's activity centre. Our study highlights the pronounced landscape-level barrier effect on wildlife mobility and, in doing so, introduces a novel and flexible approach for quantifying contemporary fragmentation from the scale of RNTs and individual animals to transportation networks and populations.
Published in
Ecography
2017, volume: 40, number: 12, pages: 1369-1380
Publisher: WILEY
SLU Authors
Global goals (SDG)
SDG9 Industry, innovation and infrastructure
SDG15 Life on land
UKÄ Subject classification
Ecology
Publication identifier
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ecog.02801
Permanent link to this page (URI)
https://res.slu.se/id/publ/92678