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- Title
A spatiotemporal analysis of ungulate-vehicle collision hotspots in response to road construction and realignment.
- Authors
MacDougall, Sandra; Bíl, Michal; Andrášik, Richard; Sedoník, Jiří; Stuart, Esther
- Abstract
Although roads are central to human society, they have many negative environmental impacts and create risk for traveling motorists. Our aim was to evaluate the spatiotemporal evolution of ungulate-vehicle collision (UVC) hotspots in response to major road construction. We examined two different locations and scales in the province of Alberta, Canada: (1) a highway bypass adjacent to a large city with 4.5 km of wildlife mitigation measures (wildlife fencing and two underpasses) and (2) 55 km of rural highway that was converted from a two-lane to a four-lane divided highway. Using government police collision and carcass data (2000-2021), beforeafter and control-impact analyses were used to assess changes in UVC rates. Our approach is novel in that we tested the paired use of a clustering method known as kernel density estimation plus and a spatiotemporal stepwise modification of this method to monitor UVC hotspots. By monitoring UVCs over space and time, we could identify stable vs. ephemeral UVC hotspots, a fence-end effect, and a barrier effect due to traffic volume, and we could explore hotspot stability before and after construction. The wildlife mitigation measures along the highway bypass resulted in 86% fewer UVCs compared to an unmitigated highway. At a larger scale, however, net benefits were affected by road density. The construction of a four-lane divided highway with no wildlife mitigation measures and an increase in the posted speed limit resulted in a slight increase in UVCs and the reemergence of the majority of historical UVC hotspots. Our analysis highlighted the need to incorporate wildlife considerations at a variety of scales throughout the transportation planning and mitigation evaluation process.
- Subjects
ALBERTA; PROBABILITY density function; TRAFFIC flow; TRANSPORTATION planning; ROADS; ROAD construction; SPEED limits
- Publication
Ecology & Society, 2024, Vol 29, Issue 2, p1
- ISSN
1708-3087
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.5751/ES-14883-290201