IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecomod/v247y2012icp64-70.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A model of road effect using line integrals and a test of the performance of two new road indices using the distribution of small mammals in an Atlantic Forest landscape

Author

Listed:
  • Freitas, Simone R.
  • Alexandrino, Marcos M.
  • Pardini, Renata
  • Metzger, Jean Paul

Abstract

Effects of roads on wildlife and its habitat have been measured using metrics, such as the nearest road distance, road density, and effective mesh size. In this work we introduce two new indices: (1) Integral Road Effect (IRE), which measured the sum effects of points in a road at a fixed point in the forest; and (2) Average Value of the Infinitesimal Road Effect (AVIRE), which measured the average of the effects of roads at this point. IRE is formally defined as the line integral of a special function (the infinitesimal road effect) along the curves that model the roads, whereas AVIRE is the quotient of IRE by the length of the roads. Combining tools of ArcGIS software with a numerical algorithm, we calculated these and other road and habitat cover indices in a sample of points in a human-modified landscape in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, where data on the abundance of two groups of small mammals (forest specialists and habitat generalists) were collected in the field. We then compared through the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) a set of candidate regression models to explain the variation in small mammal abundance, including models with our two new road indices (AVIRE and IRE) or models with other road effect indices (nearest road distance, mesh size, and road density), and reference models (containing only habitat indices, or only the intercept without the effect of any variable). Compared to other road effect indices, AVIRE showed the best performance to explain abundance of forest specialist species, whereas the nearest road distance obtained the best performance to generalist species. AVIRE and habitat together were included in the best model for both small mammal groups, that is, higher abundance of specialist and generalist small mammals occurred where there is lower average road effect (less AVIRE) and more habitat. Moreover, AVIRE was not significantly correlated with habitat cover of specialists and generalists differing from the other road effect indices, except mesh size, which allows for separating the effect of roads from the effect of habitat on small mammal communities. We suggest that the proposed indices and GIS procedures could also be useful to describe other spatial ecological phenomena, such as edge effect in habitat fragments.

Suggested Citation

  • Freitas, Simone R. & Alexandrino, Marcos M. & Pardini, Renata & Metzger, Jean Paul, 2012. "A model of road effect using line integrals and a test of the performance of two new road indices using the distribution of small mammals in an Atlantic Forest landscape," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 247(C), pages 64-70.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecomod:v:247:y:2012:i:c:p:64-70
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2012.07.033
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304380012003821
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2012.07.033?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Freitas, Simone R. & Constantino, Everton & Alexandrino, Marcos M., 2018. "Computational geometry applied to develop new metrics of road and edge effects and their performance to understand the distribution of small mammals in an Atlantic forest landscape," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 388(C), pages 24-30.
    2. Manuel Sánchez-Fernández & Juan Miguel Barrigón Morillas & David Montes González & José Juan de Sanjosé Blasco, 2022. "Impact of Roads on Environmental Protected Areas: Analysis and Comparison of Metrics for Assessing Habitat Fragmentation," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(10), pages 1-20, October.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecomod:v:247:y:2012:i:c:p:64-70. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/ecological-modelling .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.