1
|
Blais BR, Shaw CJ, Brocka CW, Johnson SL, Lauger KK. Anthropogenic, environmental and temporal associations with vertebrate road mortality in a wildland-urban interface of a biodiverse desert ecoregion. ROYAL SOCIETY OPEN SCIENCE 2024; 11:240439. [PMID: 39086836 PMCID: PMC11288681 DOI: 10.1098/rsos.240439] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/17/2024] [Revised: 06/30/2024] [Accepted: 07/01/2024] [Indexed: 08/02/2024]
Abstract
Road mortality adversely affects wildlife populations. As urbanization and infrastructure densities expand, transportation and wildlife management aim to mitigate wildlife-vehicle conflicts while conserving biodiversity. Roadways in aridland ecosystems can invariably and adversely impact wildlife differently from temperate and other biomes, yet these rapidly urbanizing regions are understudied as are urban-rural gradients. We conducted road-cruise surveys (n = 204; 2018-2023) to assess anthropogenic, environmental, and temporal factors associated with vertebrate roadkill across the wildland-urban interface of Arizona's biodiverse Sonoran Desert ecoregion-already subjected to increased human development and climate change. Of n = 2019 vertebrates observed, 28.5% were roadkill. Increasing urbanization levels were associated with reduced vertebrate abundance on roads and increased road-killed endothermic vertebrates. Traffic volume was strongly associated with reduced vertebrate abundance and increased roadkill; additive effects on roadkill began at approximately 20 vehicles. Daily low temperature and/or relative humidity were also associated with roadkill across vertebrate groups. We provide empirical evidence to understand wildlife-roadkill associations across expanding wildland-urban interfaces to inform effective roadkill mitigation and wildlife conservation management strategies in biodiverse aridland regions. We recommend that managers mitigate or avoid development in rural areas that possess high biodiversity, valuable waterways or migration corridors, and populations of vulnerable species.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Brian R. Blais
- School of Natural Resources and the Environment, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA
- Southwest Zoologists’ League, Tucson, AZ, USA
| | - Corey J. Shaw
- School of Natural Resources and the Environment, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA
| | - Colin W. Brocka
- School of Natural Resources and the Environment, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA
| | - Samantha L. Johnson
- School of Natural Resources and the Environment, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA
| | | |
Collapse
|
2
|
Hoffmann MT, Ostapowicz K, Bartoń K, Ibisch PL, Selva N. Mapping roadless areas in regions with contrasting human footprint. Sci Rep 2024; 14:4722. [PMID: 38413813 PMCID: PMC10899609 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-55283-3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/16/2023] [Accepted: 02/22/2024] [Indexed: 02/29/2024] Open
Abstract
In an increasingly human- and road-dominated world, the preservation of functional ecosystems has become highly relevant. While the negative ecological impacts of roads on ecosystems are numerous and well documented, roadless areas have been proposed as proxy for functional ecosystems. However, their potential remains underexplored, partly due to the incomplete mapping of roads. We assessed the accuracy of roadless areas identification using freely available road-data in two regions with contrasting levels of anthropogenic influence: boreal Canada and temperate Central Europe (Poland, Slovakia, Czechia, and Hungary). Within randomly selected circular plots (per region and country), we visually examined the completeness of road mapping using OpenStreetMap 2020 and assessed whether human influences affect mapping quality using four variables. In boreal Canada, roads were completely mapped in 3% of the plots, compared to 40% in Central Europe. Lower Human Footprint Index and road density values were related to greater incompleteness in road mapping. Roadless areas, defined as areas at least 1 km away from any road, covered 85% of the surface in boreal Canada (mean size ± s.d. = 272 ± 12,197 km2), compared to only 0.4% in temperate Central Europe (mean size ± s.d. = 0.6 ± 3.1 km2). By visually interpreting and manually adding unmapped roads in 30 randomly selected roadless areas from each study country, we observed a similar reduction in roadless surface in both Canada and Central Europe (27% vs 28%) when all roads were included. This study highlights the urgent need for improved road mapping techniques to support research on roadless areas as conservation targets and surrogates of functional ecosystems.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Monika T Hoffmann
- Institute of Nature Conservation, Polish Academy of Sciences, 31-120, Krakow, Poland.
- Institute of Geography and Spatial Management, Faculty of Geography and Geology, Jagiellonian University, 30-387, Krakow, Poland.
| | - Katarzyna Ostapowicz
- Norwegian Institute of Nature Research (NINA), FRAM-High North Centre for Climate and the Environment, 9296, Tromsø, Norway
- Institute of Geography and Spatial Management, Faculty of Geography and Geology, Jagiellonian University, 30-387, Krakow, Poland
| | - Kamil Bartoń
- Institute of Nature Conservation, Polish Academy of Sciences, 31-120, Krakow, Poland
| | - Pierre L Ibisch
- Centre for Econics and Ecosystem Management, Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development, 16225, Eberswalde, Germany
| | - Nuria Selva
- Institute of Nature Conservation, Polish Academy of Sciences, 31-120, Krakow, Poland
- Departamento de Ciencias Integradas, Facultad de Ciencias Experimentales, Centro de Estudios Avanzados en Física, Matemáticas y Computación, Universidad de Huelva, 21071, Huelva, Spain
- Estación Biológica de Doñana, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 41092, Sevilla, Spain
| |
Collapse
|
3
|
Uhl JH, Leyk S, Chiang YY, Knoblock CA. Towards the automated large-scale reconstruction of past road networks from historical maps. COMPUTERS, ENVIRONMENT AND URBAN SYSTEMS 2022; 94:101794. [PMID: 35464256 PMCID: PMC9030764 DOI: 10.1016/j.compenvurbsys.2022.101794] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/14/2023]
Abstract
Transportation infrastructure, such as road or railroad networks, represent a fundamental component of our civilization. For sustainable planning and informed decision making, a thorough understanding of the long-term evolution of transportation infrastructure such as road networks is crucial. However, spatially explicit, multi-temporal road network data covering large spatial extents are scarce and rarely available prior to the 2000s. Herein, we propose a framework that employs increasingly available scanned and georeferenced historical map series to reconstruct past road networks, by integrating abundant, contemporary road network data and color information extracted from historical maps. Specifically, our method uses contemporary road segments as analytical units and extracts historical roads by inferring their existence in historical map series based on image processing and clustering techniques. We tested our method on over 300,000 road segments representing more than 50,000 km of the road network in the United States, extending across three study areas that cover 42 historical topographic map sheets dated between 1890 and 1950. We evaluated our approach by comparison to other historical datasets and against manually created reference data, achieving F-1 scores of up to 0.95, and showed that the extracted road network statistics are highly plausible over time, i.e., following general growth patterns. We demonstrated that contemporary geospatial data integrated with information extracted from historical map series open up new avenues for the quantitative analysis of long-term urbanization processes and landscape changes far beyond the era of operational remote sensing and digital cartography.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Johannes H. Uhl
- Earth Lab, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309, USA
- Institute of Behavioral Science, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309, USA
| | - Stefan Leyk
- Institute of Behavioral Science, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309, USA
- Department of Geography, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309, USA
| | - Yao-Yi Chiang
- Department of Computer Science & Engineering, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA
| | - Craig A. Knoblock
- Information Sciences Institute, University of Southern California, Marina del Rey, CA 90292, USA
- Spatial Sciences Institute, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA
| |
Collapse
|
4
|
Xue J, Jiang N, Liang S, Pang Q, Yabe T, Ukkusuri SV, Ma J. Quantifying the spatial homogeneity of urban road networks via graph neural networks. NAT MACH INTELL 2022. [DOI: 10.1038/s42256-022-00462-y] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/09/2022]
|
5
|
Poley LG, Schuster R, Smith W, Ray JC. Identifying differences in roadless areas in Canada based on global, national, and regional road datasets. CONSERVATION SCIENCE AND PRACTICE 2022. [DOI: 10.1111/csp2.12656] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/30/2022] Open
Affiliation(s)
- Lucy G. Poley
- Wildlife Conservation Society Canada Toronto Ontario Canada
| | - Richard Schuster
- Nature Conservancy of Canada Toronto Ontario Canada
- Carleton University Department of Biology Ottawa Ontario Canada
| | - Wynet Smith
- Independent Researcher Ottawa Ontario Canada
| | - Justina C. Ray
- Wildlife Conservation Society Canada Toronto Ontario Canada
| |
Collapse
|
6
|
Cabrera-Arnau C, Prieto Curiel R, Bishop SR. Uncovering the behaviour of road accidents in urban areas. ROYAL SOCIETY OPEN SCIENCE 2020; 7:191739. [PMID: 32431872 PMCID: PMC7211831 DOI: 10.1098/rsos.191739] [Citation(s) in RCA: 16] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/03/2019] [Accepted: 03/19/2020] [Indexed: 05/22/2023]
Abstract
Different patterns in the incidence of road accidents are revealed when considering areas with increased levels of urbanization. To understand these patterns, road accident data from England and Wales is explored. In particular, the data are used to (i) generate time series for comparison of the incidence of road accidents in urban as opposed to rural areas, (ii) analyse the relationship between the number of road accidents and the population size of a set of urban areas, and (iii) model the likelihood of suffering an accident in an urban area and its dependence with population size. It is observed that minor and serious accidents are more frequent in urban areas, whereas fatal accidents are more likely in rural areas. It is also shown that, generally, the number of accidents in an urban area depends on population size superlinearly, with this superlinear behaviour becoming stronger for lower degrees of severity. Finally, given an accident in an urban area, the probability that the accident is fatal or serious decreases with population size and the probability that it is minor, increases sublinearly. These findings promote the question as to why such behaviours exist, the answer to which will lead to more sustainable urban policies.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- C. Cabrera-Arnau
- Department of Mathematics, University College London, Gower Street, WC1E 6BT London, UK
| | - R. Prieto Curiel
- Research in Spatial Economics (RiSE-group), Department of Mathematical Sciences, Universidad EAFIT, Medellin, Colombia
| | - S. R. Bishop
- Department of Mathematics, University College London, Gower Street, WC1E 6BT London, UK
| |
Collapse
|
7
|
From the betweenness centrality in street networks to structural invariants in random planar graphs. Nat Commun 2018; 9:2501. [PMID: 29950619 PMCID: PMC6021391 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-04978-z] [Citation(s) in RCA: 76] [Impact Index Per Article: 12.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/02/2017] [Accepted: 06/05/2018] [Indexed: 11/15/2022] Open
Abstract
The betweenness centrality, a path-based global measure of flow, is a static predictor of congestion and load on networks. Here we demonstrate that its statistical distribution is invariant for planar networks, that are used to model many infrastructural and biological systems. Empirical analysis of street networks from 97 cities worldwide, along with simulations of random planar graph models, indicates the observed invariance to be a consequence of a bimodal regime consisting of an underlying tree structure for high betweenness nodes, and a low betweenness regime corresponding to loops providing local path alternatives. Furthermore, the high betweenness nodes display a non-trivial spatial clustering with increasing spatial correlation as a function of the edge-density. Our results suggest that the spatial distribution of betweenness is a more accurate discriminator than its statistics for comparing static congestion patterns and its evolution across cities as demonstrated by analyzing 200 years of street data for Paris. The betweenness centrality is a metric commonly used in network analysis. Here the authors show that the distribution of this metric in urban street networks is invariant in the case of 97 cities. This invariance could affect network flows, dynamics and congestion management in cities.
Collapse
|
8
|
Strano E, Viana MP, Sorichetta A, Tatem AJ. Mapping road network communities for guiding disease surveillance and control strategies. Sci Rep 2018; 8:4744. [PMID: 29549364 PMCID: PMC5856805 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-22969-4] [Citation(s) in RCA: 15] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/22/2017] [Accepted: 02/26/2018] [Indexed: 01/19/2023] Open
Abstract
Human mobility is increasing in its volume, speed and reach, leading to the movement and introduction of pathogens through infected travelers. An understanding of how areas are connected, the strength of these connections and how this translates into disease spread is valuable for planning surveillance and designing control and elimination strategies. While analyses have been undertaken to identify and map connectivity in global air, shipping and migration networks, such analyses have yet to be undertaken on the road networks that carry the vast majority of travellers in low and middle income settings. Here we present methods for identifying road connectivity communities, as well as mapping bridge areas between communities and key linkage routes. We apply these to Africa, and show how many highly-connected communities straddle national borders and when integrating malaria prevalence and population data as an example, the communities change, highlighting regions most strongly connected to areas of high burden. The approaches and results presented provide a flexible tool for supporting the design of disease surveillance and control strategies through mapping areas of high connectivity that form coherent units of intervention and key link routes between communities for targeting surveillance.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Emanuele Strano
- Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA.
- German Aerospace Center (DLR), German Remote Sensing Data Center (DFD), Oberpfaffenhofen, D-82234, Wessling, Germany.
| | | | - Alessandro Sorichetta
- WorldPop, Department of Geography and Environment, University of Southampton, Highfield, Southampton, UK
- Flowminder Foundation, Stockholm, Sweden
| | - Andrew J Tatem
- WorldPop, Department of Geography and Environment, University of Southampton, Highfield, Southampton, UK.
- Flowminder Foundation, Stockholm, Sweden.
| |
Collapse
|