Functions, Selection and Collocation of Greening Plants in the Construction of Ecological Roads

From the perspective of ecological construction of roads, the reduction and purifying effects of greening plants on noise, raising dust and automobile exhaust, selection principles of arbors, shrubs, ground cover plants and herbaceous fl owers, and the methods of collocating arbors shrubs and grass in the construction of ecological roads were discussed in this study.

Mapping regional forest management units:a road-based framework in Southeastern Coastal Plain and Piedmont

Management practices are one of the most important factors affecting forest structure and function.Landowners in southern United States manage forests using appropriately sized areas,to meet management objectives that include economic return,sustainability,and esthetic enjoyment.Road networks spatially designate the socioenvironmental elements for the forests,which represented and aggregated as forest management units.Road networks are widely used for managing forests by setting logging roads and firebreaks.We propose that common types of forest management are practiced in road-delineated units that can be determined by remote sensing satellite imagery coupled with crowd-sourced road network datasets.Satellite sensors do not always capture roadcaused canopy openings,so it is difficult to delineate ecologically relevant units based only on satellite data.By integrating citizen-based road networks with the National Land Cover Database,we mapped road-delineated management units across the regional landscape and analyzed the size frequency distribution of management units.We found the road-delineated units smaller than 0.5 ha comprised 64%of the number of units,but only0.98%of the total forest area.We also applied a statistical similarity test(Warren's Index)to access the equivalency of road-delineated units with forest disturbances by simulating a serious of neutral landscapes.The outputs showed that the whole southeastern U.S.has the probability of road-delineated unit of 0.44 and production forests overlapped significantly with disturbance areas with an average probability of 0.50.

Wildlife Crossing Zones along the Ring Changbai Mountain Scenic Highway, China

The 84-km long Changbai Mountain scenic Ring highway encircles and bisects the nature reserve. With the expected increasing traffic flow, increased wildlife vehicle collisions and barrier effects are likely. In order to identify wildlife crossing zones and future protective measurement, the authors carried out 10 wildlife highway crossing surveys during the winter in 2008-2009. For each 5-kin section, the authors recorded highway crossings of all small/mid-sized and large mammals and one large protected bird species, the hazel grouse （Bonasa bonasia） and noted snow depth and the dominant vegetation type. The authors detected 12 mammal species and one avifauna species crossing the highway 502 times. The smallest of mammal was the Eurasian red squirrel （Sciurus vulgaris）. Large mammals detected included the wild boar （Sus scrofe） （64） and brown bear （Ursus arctos） （1）. The average number of wildlife crossings per 5 km was 29.5. It was found that species richness and crossing frequency was higher in sections with broad leaf forest compared to sections with white birch secondary forest significantly. The authors suggested that disturbance of broad leaf forest be minimized during construction and strict protection be established for broad leaf forests around Changbai Mountain National Nature Reserve.

The identification of wildlife-vehicle collision hotspots: Citizen science reveals spatial and temporal patterns

Linear infrastructures(e.g.,roads,railways,pipelines,and powerlines)pose a serious threat to wildlife,due to the risk of wildlife-vehicle collisions(roadkills).The placement of mitigation measures,such as crossing structures,should consider species’life cycles and ecological requirements.Such an assessment would require data collection over large areas,which may be possible by employing citizen science.In this study,we aimed to identify spatiotemporal trends of roadkill occurrence using citizen science data from one of the most urbanized and biodiversityrich regions of Italy.Temporal trends were analyzed using generalized additive models,while landscape patterns were assessed by identifying significant thresholds over land cover gradients,related to increases in relative roadkill abundance,by employing threshold indicator taxa analysis.Our approach recorded a total of 529 roadkills,including 33 different species,comprising 13 mammal,10 bird,6 reptile,and 2 amphibian species.Statistical analysis indicated significant temporal trends for the red fox,the European hedgehog,the stone marten and the European badger,with peaks in roadkill occurrence between the winter and spring months.Relative roadkill abundance increased mostly in landscapes with anthropogenic land cover classes,such as complex cultivations,orchards,or urban surfaces.Our results allowed us to develop a map of potential roadkill risk that could assist in planning the placement of mitigation measures.Citizen science contributions from highly populated areas allowed data collection over a large area and a dense road network,and also directly led to the evaluation of management decisional options.