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Full text release has been delayed at the author's request until May 01, 2025

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Assessing permeability through a mixed disturbance landscape for vertebrates

Rair, Sara
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1703178805842222

Abstract Details

2024, Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, Biological Sciences.
Conflict with wildlife continues to escalate as human population increases and development expands. Understanding how vertebrates interact with the environment is a critical component to conservation ecology. Movement patterns reflect spatial and temporal changes associated with resource availability, life history stages, and habitat use. This study explored how vertebrate mortality could be used to understand the critical factors impacting the consequences of permeability, i.e., ability to move between patches on the landscape, in a mixed disturbance landscape. We assessed how spatial and temporal heterogeneity influenced terrestrial vertebrate mortality. In the biodiversity hotspot of the Oak Openings Region (OOR) of northwest Ohio, we surveyed repeatedly, across three years, approximately 50 kilometers of road segments. Vertebrate mortality locations (N=654) were related to road (e.g., traffic, road width), structural (e.g., canopy cover, soil average water capacity), compositional (e.g., landcover) and productivity (e.g., NDVI) measurements. We found vertebrate mortality locations were positively related to traffic, road width, canopy cover, and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) but negatively related to landcover as it becomes more altered (i.e., natural to agricultural). Our consistent findings across years suggest that the spatial components were influencing mortality differences more than temporal differences, and intra-year differences do not impact mortality in a way that would steer long term mitigation of permeability issues. We developed spatially explicit models for predicting current vertebrate mortality probabilities across the entire OOR. Proportion of residential/mixed landcover area was the most influential variables of mortality occurrence probability. We found mortality was well predicted and the results of the same key variables were robust across taxa and years. The models developed can serve as an assessment tool for evaluating conservation and management to improve landscape permeability. Our research demonstrates the validity of employing road surveys as a reliable method for gaining insights into locations of roadway vertebrate mortalities and the spatial factors influencing the corresponding lack of permeability. Our methodology is not limited to the OOR; it can be applied anywhere with sufficient mortality and environmental data to address ecological questions of interest. It is an accessible approach to address a wide variety of conservation challenges.
Karen Root, Ph.D. (Committee Chair)
Timothy Schetter, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
Raymond Larsen, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
Jeffrey Miner, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
Erin Labbie, Ph.D. (Other)
190 p.
Biology; Conservation; Ecology; Wildlife Conservation; Wildlife Management
Vertebrate Mortality; Roadkill; Landscape Ecology; Road Ecology; Fragmentation; Hotspot Analysis; Maxent; Mixed Disturbance; Oak Openings Region;

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Rair, S. (2024). Assessing permeability through a mixed disturbance landscape for vertebrates [Doctoral dissertation, Bowling Green State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1703178805842222

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Rair, Sara. Assessing permeability through a mixed disturbance landscape for vertebrates. 2024. Bowling Green State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1703178805842222.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Rair, Sara. "Assessing permeability through a mixed disturbance landscape for vertebrates." Doctoral dissertation, Bowling Green State University, 2024. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1703178805842222

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

bgsu1703178805842222
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This open access ETD is published by Bowling Green State University and OhioLINK.