Roadless areas and biodiversity: a case study in Alabama, USA

Chen, Xiongwen; Roberts, Kathleen A.

doi:10.1007/s10531-008-9351-2

Cited by 24 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…Roads, population centres and tourist resorts have various ecological impacts on their immediate surroundings, and importantly, their additive effect can be substantial at a landscape level, as they increase landscape fragmentation and the amount of various disturbances in the reindeer herding area (Chen & Roberts, 2008;Heilman, Strittholt, Slosser, & Dellasala, 2002;Reindeer Herders' Association, 2014). Reindeer have been reported to avoid infrastructure and sites of human activity up to several kilometers distance, and the area of avoidance may shift between seasons and years (Anttonen, Kumpula, & Colpaert, 2011;Skarin & Åhman, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Many a little makes a mickle: Cumulative land cover changes and traditional land use in the Kyrö reindeer herding district, northern Finland

Kivinen

2015

Applied Geography

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Many a little makes a mickle: Cumulative land cover changes and traditional land use in the Kyrö reindeer herding district, northern Finland

Kivinen

2015

Applied Geography

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“…Plant, insect, herptile, bird and mammal richness and community composition have all been shown to be affected by roads [10][11][12][13][14]. Biodiversity loss may occur directly via road-kill events, disturbance or pollution, or indirectly by stimulating and facilitating loss of habitat, and forming barriers to dispersal and gene flow.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Road networks predict human influence on Amazonian bird communities

et al. 2014

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Road building can lead to significant deleterious impacts on biodiversity, varying from direct road-kill mortality and direct habitat loss associated with road construction, to more subtle indirect impacts from edge effects and fragmentation. However, little work has been done to evaluate the specific effects of road networks and biodiversity loss beyond the more generalized effects of habitat loss. Here, we compared forest bird species richness and composition in the municipalities of Santarém and Belterra in Pará state, eastern Brazilian Amazon, with a road network metric called 'roadless volume (RV)' at the scale of small hydrological catchments (averaging 3721 ha). We found a significant positive relationship between RV and both forest bird richness and the average number of unique species (species represented by a single record) recorded at each site. Forest bird community composition was also significantly affected by RV. Moreover, there was no significant correlation between RV and forest cover, suggesting that road networks may impact biodiversity independently of changes in forest cover. However, variance partitioning analysis indicated that RV has partially independent and therefore additive effects, suggesting that RV and forest cover are best used in a complementary manner to investigate changes in biodiversity. Road impacts on avian species richness and composition independent of habitat loss may result from road-dependent habitat disturbance and fragmentation effects that are not captured by total percentage habitat cover, such as selective logging, fire, hunting, traffic disturbance, edge effects and road-induced fragmentation.

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“…Although there has been a recent attempt in Europe to address roadless and low-traffic areas as conservation targets (Selva et al 2011), most of research on the topic originates in the US and Australia (e.g. Strittholt and Dellasala 2001;Gelbard and Harrison 2003;Watts et al 2007;Chen and Roberts 2008). In the US roadless areas play an important role in the conservation of biodiversity due to their size and location, but also to the adoption of the Roadless Rule environmental impact statement of the Forest Service (Crist et al 2005).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Road effects on habitat richness of the Greek Natura 2000 network

Votsi¹,

Mazaris²,

Kallimanis³

et al. 2012

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The road network has both positive and negative ecological effects, and understanding these helps identify environmentally preferable solutions for transportation policy and planning. We investigated the relationship between road density and habitat type richness of Greek protected areas. We used digital vector maps of 214 sites included in the Greek Natura 2000 network. We calculated road density for the terrestrial part of each site and correlated it with habitat type richness. Average road density of protected areas (0.377 km/ km 2 ) was significantly lower than the national road density of Greece (0.446 km/km 2 ). We identified 32 sites that were not intersected by roads. These roadless sites were located at mountain tops, at islets, or in remote coastal zones. Overall we found no significant correlation between road density and habitat type richness. We suggest that the effect of road networks on habitat type richness is less apparent at landscapes with long history of human presence, because the landscape (and its habitat diversity) has coevolved with human activities over the past millennia. Our analysis provides a step towards quantifying the effect of road density on the diversity of habitats and consequently on species of conservation interest in international networks of protected areas such as the European Natura 2000 network.

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Roadless areas and biodiversity: a case study in Alabama, USA

Cited by 24 publications

References 33 publications

Many a little makes a mickle: Cumulative land cover changes and traditional land use in the Kyrö reindeer herding district, northern Finland

Many a little makes a mickle: Cumulative land cover changes and traditional land use in the Kyrö reindeer herding district, northern Finland

Road networks predict human influence on Amazonian bird communities

Road effects on habitat richness of the Greek Natura 2000 network

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