Modeling Habitat Fragmentation in Relation to Road Systems: A Tool for Transportation Planning in California

Transportation planners increasingly need effective metrics of biological impact to assist in mitigation assessment. We propose to develop Effective Mesh Size, Effective Mesh Density and Landscape Division as implementable metrics of habitat fragmentation for use in transportation planning. These metrics are developed as GIS layers, which can be used in planning and assessment of biological impact, and can be re-calculated for new roads in a scenario modeling environment. These innovative and biologically meaningful measures of landscape fragmentation will be applied to the mapped ranges of 10 key animal species. The expert in Effective Mesh Size, Dr. Jochen Jaeger, will be a Research Ecologist at UC Davis Road Ecology Center for two months to develop the models, once the UC Davis team has compiled the necessary data into the proper formats. Aspects of this methodology have already been adopted by several states in Germany and in Switzerland, and it is currently under assessment in Canada. Final products from the proposed effort will include three new GIS layers, peer-reviewed papers, and a technical report describing their use, that can be adopted directly for transportation planning in California, and that will serve as a model and metric for transportation planners throughout the world.

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Completed
• Funding: $59607.00
• Contract Numbers:

  DTRT06-G-0022

  R01-1

• Sponsor Organizations:

  California Department of Transportation

  1227 O Street
  Sacramento, CA  United States  95843
• Performing Organizations:

  Sustainable Transportation Center/ITS-Davis

  ITS-Davis
  University of California, Davis
  Davis, CA  United States  95616
• Principal Investigators:

  Berry, Alison

• Start Date: 20070501
• Expected Completion Date: 0
• Actual Completion Date: 20090930
• Source Data: RiP Project 13142

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Geographic information systems; Habitat (Ecology); Landscape design; Research projects; Transportation planning
• Uncontrolled Terms: City planners; Fragmentation
• Geographic Terms: California
• Subject Areas: Geotechnology; Highways; Planning and Forecasting; Research; I15: Environment;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01468478
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: University of California Transportation Center/Institute of Transportation Studies
• Contract Numbers: DTRT06-G-0022, R01-1
• Files: UTC, RIP, STATEDOT
• Created Date: Jan 3 2013 3:51PM