Abstract
Urbanization is one of the main drivers in the conversion of natural habitats into different land use and land cover types (LULC) which threaten the local as well as global biodiversity. This impact is particularly alarming in tropical countries like India, where ~18% of the world's population live, and its ever-growing economy (i.e., industrial development) expanded urban areas by several folds. We undertook this study to examine the impacts of urbanization (i.e., LULC) on terrestrial vertebrates (mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians) in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), Western Ghats, India. We sampled different habitats ranged from highly disturbed urban areas to less disturbed forested areas. Multiple sampling methods such as quadrat sampling, line transect, point count, and camera trapping were used to quantify the target taxa. We used multi-species occupancy modeling in the Bayesian framework to estimate detection probability and occupancy and to assess the effect of various LULC on different species. All four groups showed a significant negative impact of increasing anthropogenic habitat cover on occupancy. Out of 213 species detected in this study, 96% of mammals, 85% of birds, 93.75% of amphibians, and 69.43% of reptiles showed a negative effect of anthropogenic habitat cover. Evidence suggests that historical and recent human disturbances could have played an important role in transforming this area from semi-evergreen and moist deciduous forest to open, scrubby, dry deciduous, and fire-prone landscape. This might be the reason for the high occupancy of open and degraded forest habitat preferring species in our study area. We recommend species-rich areas in the MMR, e.g., Karnala Bird Sanctuary (KBS) and Prabalgad-Matheran-Malanggad Hill Range (PMMHR), must be conserved through habitat restoration, ecotourism, public awareness, and policymaking.
Highlights
The rapid expansion of the world’s urban population is a significant global driver of land use conversion and ecosystem modification [1, 2]
This study strengthened the importance of detection probability and multi-species occupancy modeling in monitoring species richness and occupancy, which could be otherwise underestimated
Multi-species occupancy modeling to access the impacts of land use and land cover on terrestrial vertebrates wildlife managers to understand and conserve the biodiversity more quantitatively and objectively
Summary
The rapid expansion of the world’s urban population is a significant global driver of land use conversion and ecosystem modification [1, 2]. The urban populations are increasing with alarming rates, if the current trend continues, 6.3 billion or 70% of the global population would be inhabiting in cities by 2050, which is almost double the population of urban dwellers in 2010, 3.5 billion [3]. Modern cities are growing on an average twice as fast as urban populations [4, 5]. The most striking feature of this urban explosion is periurbanization, i.e., rural areas around cities are transformed into or surrounded by extended metropolitan regions [6, 7]. Peri-urbanization, the most prominent form of urban growth and urbanization in developing countries, especially in Asia and Africa, has created a complex mosaics of diverse land uses and land covers in all the ecosystems [8]
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