Using nighttime lights to assess infrastructure expansion within and around protected areas in South America

Abstract

Protected areas (PAs) are important mechanisms for conserving biodiversity and buffering anthropogenic pressures, but the expansion and intensification of human activities within and around PAs are threatening the biological diversity they are designed to protect. In South America, a region which includes many biodiversity hotspots (e.g., Atlantic Forest, Andes), agriculture, mining, oil and gas exploitation, dam construction, and settlements have been expanding and intensifying within and around PAs. These human activities need infrastructure (e.g., buildings, logistic facilities, ports), which leads to increased pressure on PAs. In this study, we used nighttime light data and the World Database on Protected Areas to evaluate the extent of intrusion of infrastructure in PAs in South America between 2001 and 2011. Our results show that in general PAs in all of the seven IUCN categories are buffering the intrusion of infrastructure within them, but this was not the case for PAs in multiple-use categories where there was a considerable increase in infrastructure within these PAs. The largest increase in infrastructure occurred within the first 60 km from the border of the PAs, and for multiple-use categories, the peak occurred in the first 10 km. In addition, infrastructure expansion around PAs in category I showed more variability and the largest extent. Infrastructure expansion within and around PAs varied among countries. There were only 23 of the 2,902 PAs with zero expansion, 16 were located in Brazil, four in Colombia, and one in Suriname, Venezuela, and French Guiana. Ecuador and Venezuela were the two countries that had the most infrastructure expansion within and around their PAs, while Guyana and French Guiana had the least development. Presently, South America has ∼22% of the land area under some type of protection. Hopefully, the management of PAs will improve to help buffer the impacts of human activities and improve biodiversity conservation. Unfortunately, our results show that opposite, infrastructure is expanding within and around the PAs, which will most likely lead to ecological degradation and isolation of many of these PAs.

Reducing the blue spectrum of artificial light at night minimises insect attraction in a tropical lowland forest

“…To our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate the potential impacts and mitigation methods for ALAN in tropical forest. This is timely and important given that the hyper‐diverse and largely unstudied assemblage of insects inhabiting Amazonian rain forests (Stork, 2007; Novotny & Miller, 2014) is under threat by expanding infrastructure development bringing land use change and nocturnal lighting to previously undisturbed areas (Ribeirão de Freitas et al ., 2017; Andrade‐Núñez & Aide, 2020). Insects respond relatively rapidly to human disturbance, making them potentially vulnerable to site extirpation (Basset et al ., 2004) or to changes in dominance structure, in particular when insect species are introduced to new habitats (Mikheyev et al ., 2008).…”

“…Inhabitants, workers and surveillance systems require illumination to varying degrees. New lighting is particularly problematic as infrastructure is developed in natural areas, extending deep into naïve ecosystems including in and around protected areas in the tropics (Guetté et al ., 2018; Andrade‐Núñez & Aide, 2020). Selective pressure likely erodes flight‐to‐light behaviour in some insects over time (Altermatt et al ., 2009) and phototaxis is greatest when contrast is highest between the light and its surroundings (Robinson & Robinson, 1950; Frank, 2006).…”

Modelling Climatically Suitable Areas for Mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla King) and Their Shifts across Neotropics: The Role of Protected Areas

“…In addition, Ecuador in 2008 implemented the "Programa Socio Bosque", aimed at the conservation of forest resources inside and outside PA and buffer zones [188]. Despite all these initiatives, Ecuador is one of the countries in South America with the greatest expansion of road infrastructure inside and outside the SNAP [182,189]. Globally, an estimated 14.8% of tree species would fall within areas under high human pressure, even within existing PAs [190].…”

Measuring Regional Inequality in the Andean Countries: A Multiple-Stage Nested Theil Decomposition Using Night Light Emissions

“…Nighttime lights from satellite imagery are often used in regional analyses to track economic activity and economic development (Dai et al 2017;Wang et al 2019;Andrade-Núñez and Aide 2020;Gibson and Boe-Gibson 2021;Maldonado 2022;McCord and Rodriguez-Heredia 2022), and socioeconomic and political outcomes (Hodler and Raschky 2014;Bruederle and Hodler 2018;Ferreira 2018;Jagnani and Khanna 2020;Maldonado 2023). These studies rely on the assumption that night light emissions implicitly capture relevant information about spatial heterogeneity and human impact on a local level.…”