Top

Biodiversity and Conservation

Published in:

01-11-2012 | Original Paper

Road mortality in freshwater turtles: identifying causes of spatial patterns to optimize road planning and mitigation

Authors: Tom A. Langen, Kari E. Gunson, Christopher A. Scheiner, Jesse T. Boulerice

Published in: Biodiversity and Conservation | Issue 12/2012

Activate our intelligent search to find suitable subject content or patents.

search-config

AI-assisted search

Off

Abstract

Road mortality of freshwater turtles can be high enough to imperil populations near roads, thus there is a need to efficiently and accurately locate regions of excessive road-kill along road networks for mitigation. Weekly over 2 years, we drove a 160 km highway circuit in northeastern New York State, USA and recorded the location of all detected road-kill of three freshwater turtle species (Chelydra serpentina, Chrysemys picta, Emydoidea blandingii). We then analyzed the spatial dispersion of road-kill and the road and landscape features associated with road-kill locations. Road-kill was most prevalent at a limited number of short road segments, termed ‘hotspots’. The locations of hotspots, as indicated by kernel density analysis, and the peak spatial extent of hotspots (250 m), as indicated by Ripley’s K, corresponded to the locations and average lengths of causeways (road segments with wetlands within 100 m on both sides). Hotspots were located at causeways that were greater than 200 m length and characterized by high traffic volumes, close proximity to water, and high forest coverage. We conclude that freshwater turtle road mortality is spatially aggregated at short, severe hotspots, and hotspot locations can be predicted when the locations of wetlands, traffic volumes, and the land-uses bordering roads are known. Hotspot models using these predictors can locate sites along a road network that are the most promising for mitigation to reduce excessive road mortality and maintain connectivity.

previous article Environmental determinants of freshwater mollusc biodiversity and identification of priority areas for conservation in Mediterranean water courses

next article Increased openness around retained oaks increases species richness of saproxylic beetles

Dont have a licence yet? Then find out more about our products and how to get one now:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 102.000 Bücher
über 537 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Automobil + Motoren
Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Elektrotechnik + Elektronik
Energie + Nachhaltigkeit
Finance + Banking
Management + Führung
Marketing + Vertrieb
Maschinenbau + Werkstoffe
Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

Springer Professional "Technik"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Technik" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 67.000 Bücher
über 390 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Automobil + Motoren
Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Elektrotechnik + Elektronik
Energie + Nachhaltigkeit
Maschinenbau + Werkstoffe

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

Andrews KM, Gibbons JW (2005) How do highways influence snake movement? Behavioral responses to roads and vehicles. Copeia 2005:772–782CrossRef

Andrews KM, Gibbons JW, Jochimsen DM (2008) Ecological effects of roads on amphibians and reptiles: a literature review. In: Mitchell JC, Jung Brown RE, Bartholomew B (eds) Urban herpetology: herpetological conservation, vol 3. Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles, Salt Lake City, pp 121–143

Aresco MJ (2005a) The effect of sex-specific terrestrial movements and roads on the sex ratio of freshwater turtles. Biol Conserv 123:37–44CrossRef

Aresco MJ (2005b) Mitigation measures to reduce highway mortality of turtles and other herpetofauna at a North Florida Lake. J Wildl Manag 69:540–551CrossRef

Ashley EP, Robinson JT (1996) Road mortality of amphibians and other wildlife in the Long Point Causeway, Lake Erie, Ontario. Can Field-Natur 110:403–412

Attum O, Lee YM, Roe JH, Kingsbury BA (2008) Wetland complexes and upland-wetland linkages: landscape effects on the distribution of rare and common wetland reptiles. J Zool 275:245–251CrossRef

Bailey TC, Gatrell AC (1995) Interactive spatial data analysis. Longman Scientific and Technical, Essex

Bastin L, Rollason J, Hilton AD, Pillay P, Corcoran C, Elgy J, Lambert P, De P, Worthington T, Burrows K (2007) Spatial aspects of MRSA epidemiology: a case study using stochastic simulation, kernel estimation and SATSCAN. Int J Geograph Inform Sci 21:811–836CrossRef

Beaudry F, deMaynadier PG, Hunter ML Jr (2008) Identifying road mortality threat at multiple spatial scales for semi-aquatic turtles. Biol Conserv 141:2550–2563CrossRef

Bodie JR (2001) Stream and riparian management for freshwater turtles. J Environ Manage 62:443–455PubMedCrossRef

Bowne DR, Bowers MA, Hines JE (2006) Connectivity in an agricultural landscape as reflected by interpond movements of a freshwater turtle. Conserv Biol 20:780–791PubMedCrossRef

Brown JW (2006) Eco-logical: an ecosystem approach to developing infrastructure projects. Federal Highway Administration, Washington DC, USA

Burnham KP, Anderson DR (1998) Model selection and multimodel inference: a practical information-theoretic approach, 2nd edn. Springer-Verlag, Berlin Germany

Clevenger AP, Wierzchowski J, Chruszcz B, Gunson K (2002) GIS-generated, expert-based models for wildlife habitat linkages and mitigation planning. Conserv Biol 16:503–514CrossRef

Clevenger AP, Chruszcz B, Gunson K (2003) Spatial patterns and factors influencing small vertebrate fauna road kill aggregations. Biol Conserv 109:15–26CrossRef

Congdon JD, Dunham AE, van Loben Sels RC (1994) Demographics of common snapping turtles (Chelydra serpentina): implications for conservation and management of long-lived organisms. Am Zool 34:397–408

Dodd CK Jr, Barichivich WJ, Smith LL (2004) Effectiveness of barrier wall and culverts in reducing wildlife mortality on a heavily traveled highway in Florida. Biol Conserv 118:619–631CrossRef

Findlay CS, Bourdages J (2000) Response time of wetland biodiversity to road construction on adjacent lands. Conserv Biol 14:86–94CrossRef

Findlay CS, Houlahan J (1997) Anthropogenic correlates of species richness in southeastern Ontario wetlands. Conserv Biol 11:1000–1009CrossRef

Forman RTT, Sperling D, Bissonette JA, Clevenger AP, Cutshall CD, Dale VH, Fahrig L, France R, Goldman CR, Heanue K, Jones JA, Swanson FJ, Turrentine T, Winter TC (2003) Road ecology: science and solutions. Island Press, Washington DC

Freckleton RP (2011) Dealing with collinearity in behavioral and ecological data: model averaging and the problems of measurement error. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 65:91–101CrossRef

Gibbons JW (2003) Terrestrial habitat: a vital component for herpetofauna of isolated wetlands. Wetlands 23:630–635CrossRef

Gibbs JP, Shriver WG (2002) Estimating the effects of road mortality on turtle populations. Conserv Biol 16:1647–1652CrossRef

Grueber CE, Nakagawa S, Laws RJ, Jamieson IG (2011) Multimodel inference in ecology and evolution: challenges and solutions. J Evol Biol 24:699–711PubMedCrossRef

Gunson KE, Mountrakis G, Quackenbush LJ (2011) Spatial wildlife-vehicle collision models: a review of current work and its application to transportation mitigation projects. J Environ Manage 92:1074–1082PubMedCrossRef

Heppell SS (1998) Application of life-history theory and population model analysis to turtle conservation. Copeia 1998:67–375CrossRef

Hobday AJ, Minstrell ML (2008) Distribution and abundance of roadkill on Tasmanian highways: human management options. Wildl Res 35:712–726CrossRef

Joyal LA, McCollough M, Hunter ML Jr (2001) Landscape ecology approaches to wetland species conservation: a case study of two turtle species in southern Maine. Conserv Biol 15:1755–1762CrossRef

Langen TA (2009) Predictive models of herpetofauna road mortality hotspots in extensive road networks: three approaches and a general procedure for creating hotspot models that are useful for environmental managers. In: ICOET 2009 proceedings: wildlife-vehicle collisions—data collection, monitoring and modeling, pp 475–486. http://www.icoet.net/ICOET_2009/09proceedings.asp

Langen, TA (2011) Design considerations and effectiveness of fencing for turtles: three case studies along northeastern New York State highways. In: ICOET 2011 proceedings

Langen TA, Machniak A, Crowe EK, Mangan C, Marker DF, Liddle N, Roden B (2007) Methodologies for surveying herpetofauna mortality on rural highways. J Wild Manag 71:1361–1368CrossRef

Langen TA, Ogden K, Schwarting L (2009) Predicting hotspots of herpetofauna road mortality along highway road networks: model creation and experimental validation. J Wild Manag 73:104–114CrossRef

Lesbarreres D, Fahrig L (2012) Measures to reduce population fragmentation by roads: what has worked and how do we know? Trends Ecol Evol 27:374–380PubMedCrossRef

Litvaitis JA, Tash JP (2008) An approach toward understanding wildlife-vehicle collisions. Environ Manage 42:688–697PubMedCrossRef

Malo JE, Suarez F, Diez A (2004) Can we mitigate animal-vehicle accidents using predictive models? J Appl Ecol 41:701–710CrossRef

Marchand MN, Litvaitis JA (2004) Effects of habitat features and landscape composition on the population structure of a common aquatic turtle in a region undergoing rapid development. Conserv Biol 18:758–767CrossRef

Mitchell JC, Klemens MW (2000) Primary and secondary effects of habitat alteration. In: Klemmens MW (ed) Turtle conservation. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington DC, USA, pp 5–32

Mountrakis G, Gunson K (2009) Multi-scale spatiotemporal analyses of moose-vehicle collisions: a case study in northern Vermont. Int J Geo Inform Sci 23:1389–1412CrossRef

O’Brien RM (2007) Caution regarding rules of thumb for variance inflation factors. Qual Quant 41:673–690CrossRef

Pfeifer Coehlo I, Kindel A, Pfeifer Coehlo AV (2008) Roadkills of vertebrate species on two highways through the Atlantic Forest Biosphere Reserve, southern Brazil. Eur J Wildl Res 54:689–699CrossRef

Pope SE, Fahrig L, Merriam NG (2000) Landscape complementation and metapopulation effects on leopard frog populations. Ecol 81:2498–2508CrossRef

Ramp D, Caldwell J, Edwards KA, Warton D, Croft DB (2005) Modeling of wildlife fatality hotspots along the Snowy Mountain Highway in New South Wales, Australia. Biol Conserv 126:474–490CrossRef

Ramp D, Wilson VK, Croft DB (2006) Assessing the impacts of roads in peri-urban reserves: road-based fatalities and road usage by wildlife in the Royal National Park, New South Wales, Australia. Biol Conserv 129:348–359CrossRef

Ripley BD (1981) Spatial statistics. John Wiley, ChichesterCrossRef

Roe JH, Georges A (2007) Heterogeneous wetland complexes, buffer zones, and travel corridors: landscape management for freshwater reptiles. Biol Conserv 135:67–76CrossRef

Seiler A (2004) Trends and spatial patterns in ungulate-vehicle collisions in Sweden. Wildl Res 10:301–313

Seiler A (2005) Predicting locations of moose-vehicle collisions in Sweden. J Appl Ecol 42:371–382CrossRef

Seiler A, Helldin JO (2006) Mortality in wildlife due to transportation. In: Davenport JL (ed) The ecology of transportation: managing mobility for the environment. Springer, Berlin, pp 165–189CrossRef

Shepard DB, Kuhns AR, Dreslik MJ, Phillips CA (2008) Roads as barriers to animal movement in fragmented landscapes. Anim Conserv 11:288–296CrossRef

Slater FM (2002) An assessment of wildlife road casualties—the potential discrepancy between numbers counted and numbers killed. Web Ecol 3:33–42

Smith AC, Koper K, Francis CM, Fahrig L (2009) Confronting collinearity: comparing methods for disentangling the effects of habitat loss and fragmentation. Landscape Ecol 24:1271–1285CrossRef

Steen DA, Gibbs JP (2004) Effects of roads on the structure of freshwater turtle populations. Conserv Biol 18:1143–1148CrossRef

Steen DA, Aresco MJ, Beilke SG, Compton BW, Dodd CK Jr., Forrester H, Gibbons JW, Greene-McLeod J, Johnson G, Langen TA, Oldham MJ, Oxier DN, Saumure RA, Schueler FW, Sleeman J, Smith LL, Tucker JK, Gibbs JP (2006) Relative vulnerability of female turtles to road mortality. Anim Conserv 9:279–273

Steen DA, Gibbs JP, Buhlmann KA, Carr JC, Compton BW, Congdon J, Doody S, Godwin JC, Holcomb KL, Jackson D, Janzen F, Johnson G, Jones M, Lamer G, Langen TA, Plummer M, Rowe J, Saumure RA, Tucker JK, Wilson DS (2012) Distances from wetlands to freshwater turtle nests with guidelines for core terrestrial habitat conservation. Biol Conserv 150:121–128CrossRef

Woltz HW, Gibbs JP, Ducey PK (2008) Road crossing structures for amphibians and reptiles: informing design through behavioral analysis. Biol Conserv 141:2745–2750CrossRef

Title: Road mortality in freshwater turtles: identifying causes of spatial patterns to optimize road planning and mitigation
Authors: Tom A. Langen
Kari E. Gunson
Christopher A. Scheiner
Jesse T. Boulerice
Publication date: 01-11-2012
Publisher: Springer Netherlands
Published in: Biodiversity and Conservation / Issue 12/2012
Print ISSN: 0960-3115
Electronic ISSN: 1572-9710
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-012-0352-9

Springer Professional

Abstract

Please log in to get access to your license.

Dont have a licence yet? Then find out more about our products and how to get one now:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Springer Professional "Technik"

Other articles of this Issue 12/2012

Erratum to: Amphibian and reptile communities of rainforest fragments: minimum patch size to support high richness and abundance

Increased openness around retained oaks increases species richness of saproxylic beetles

Aquaculture: a newly emergent food production sector—and perspectives of its impacts on biodiversity and conservation

Safety in numbers? Supplanting data quality with fanciful models in wildlife monitoring and conservation

Assessing the effects of selective logging on birds in Neotropical piedmont and cloud montane forests

Environmental determinants of freshwater mollusc biodiversity and identification of priority areas for conservation in Mediterranean water courses