Effect of Roads on Ecological Corridors Used for Wildlife Movement in a Natural Heritage Site

Hui Shi,Cuirong Wang,Tiange Shi,Fang Han,Zhaoping Yang,Zhi Wang

doi:10.3390/su10082725

Abstract

Roads are the link between geographic space and human socio-economic activities, promoting local economic development, and simultaneously causing various negative effects, such as segmentation, interference, destruction, degradation, and pollution. In China, the construction of roads is rapid, which might affect wildlife movement, landscape pattern, and land use change, thereby, affecting the conservation of heritage sites. In the present study, the minimum cumulative resistance model, along with geographic information system technology, was adopted to compute the ecological corridor for wildlife movement between the source patches and to analyze ecological corridor changes under two conditions (road presence/absence) at two time points in Kanas, nominated as a World Natural Heritage site. The relationships between the ecological corridor changes and various factors, including the cutting index of the ‘road-effect zones’, terrain, and road geometric characteristics, were examined using the geographical detector model to identify the influencing factors and mechanisms of the corridor changes, in order to rationally simulate the potential ecological corridors. In addition, the detached and fragmented ecological patches can be connected to effectively protect the biodiversity, biological habitats, and species, which are important means to achieve regional sustainable development and ecological construction.

Highlights

Fragmentation has become a global issue, and anthropogenic activities are considered to be the main cause, especially for the loss of connectivity between different habitats [1]
We evaluated the effect of roads on the ecological corridors for wildlife movement in Kanas
In 2013, the area of each landscape type within the road buffer changed, with the area of grassland serving as the matrix landscape within the road buffer, increasing by 71.27 km2, whereas, that of the forestland reduced by 20.68 km2, and that of the bare land increased by 5.58 km2

Summary

Introduction

Fragmentation has become a global issue, and anthropogenic activities are considered to be the main cause, especially for the loss of connectivity between different habitats [1]. Roads play an important role in socio-economic development, such as connecting geographical space and human socio-economic activities, promoting local economic development, and growing social wealth. They have a direct or indirect effect on the ecosystem, causing various adverse effects on natural landscapes [5]. The effect of roads is reflected by the fragmentation of wildlife habitats [6,7,8], which disrupts the horizontal ecological flow, leading to a series of changes in the ecological processes that affect and alter the structure and process of ecosystems [9]

Methods

Results

Conclusion