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Título:	Large-scale identification and prioritization of road and railway tracts where de-fragmentation measures should be applied: a country-wide project in Spain
Autor:	Estrada, Alba CSIC ORCID; Viñuela, Javier CSIC ORCID
Palabras clave:	Conferencia Internacional IENE
Fecha de publicación:	2012
Resumen:	Roads and railways may have a relevant impact on wildlife due to habitat alteration, population fragmentation/isolation or roadkills. Furthermore, increasing road casualties with large ungulates in some countries such as Spain is a growing social problem that needs to be solved. De-fragmentation techniques which help to mitigate this problem have been well developed and applied across the world, but may imply considerable technical problems or induce increased cost of public works. Thus, identification of transport infrastructure tracts where these de-fragmenting measures should be applied is a major challenge when it comes to investing the limited economical resources. With this aim, we developed a framework based on a conservation index, habitat distribution and fragmentation, and key species mapping to produce cartography assigning an index of relevance for defragmentation for every 1 km tract of the entire national road and railway network. We collected the distribution of all vertebrate species within Spain according to distribution atlases. This information is available at a resolution scale of 10 km x 10 km UTM cells. We calculated a conservation index based on rarity and vulnerability of vertebrate species for each ecoregion of the country, i. e., Mediterranean, Eurosiberian, Balearic Islands and Canary Islands. We then modelled this response variable with a multiple lineal regression and with environmental variables related to topography, climate, spatial location and human activity. As environmental variables were available at a resolution scale of 1 km x 1 km, it was possible to downscale the model to this finer resolution using a raster calculator in a Geographic Information System. In this way, we obtained important conservation areas for vertebrates in Spain at that resolution. We also included in the analysis the information about High Natural Value areas recently produced by the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Environment , the protected area network (including Natura 2000), the presence of target species (those endangered and highly vulnerable to road kills, as well as ungulates causing road casualties), and the presence of rivers and wetlands. Assigning different scores to each of the information layers analysed we obtained a conservation index in each 1 km x 1 km UTM cell. The information about hotspots of road casualties and ecological corridors was also considered in some regions where the information was available. We calculated also a habitat fragmentation index (Effective Mesh Size) and an infrastructure affection index for each of the squares, considering the kind of infrastructure (high speed railway, regular railway, motorway or road) and the overall surface occupying each square. We overlapped the three indexes to identify those sections showing major conflicts between transport infrastructures and conservation of the Spanish Natural Heritage. Finally, we provided proposals to apply defragmentation measures to reduce the impact at the most conflictive points. This work was developed in the context of the Spanish Working Group on Habitat Fragmentation due to Transport Infrastructure.
Descripción:	Resumen del trabajo presentado a la IENE (Infra Eco Network Europe) International Conference: "Safeguarding ecological functions across transport infrastructure", celebrada en Postdam (Alemania) del 21 al 24 de octubre de 2012.-- et al.
URI:	http://hdl.handle.net/10261/146801
Aparece en las colecciones:	(IREC) Comunicaciones congresos