Why Road Ecology Can Improve Our Vision for Future Wilderness
“The road system ties the land together for us yet slices nature into pieces”
Roads are the physical reflex of human social connection. They are as well the economical and political decisions that lead to land-use change. From a human point of view, they facilitate the movement of people and goods and extends the boundary of social interactions.
Yet to nature, roads are the first signal for fragmented and disruptive ecosystem services and animal movements.
What is Road Ecology?
Road ecology is a scientific discipline dedicated to studying transportation infrastructures positive and negative effects on ecological processes.
Roads are the older infrastructure constructed by the human species, but road ecology is quite a recent scientific branch in environmental sciences.
The term was first described more than 20 years ago by Forman and collaborators (Forman et al., 1998) and the main goal was to — integrate the principles of landscape ecology with road and automotive engineering to provide new ideas for roadway designers and society as a whole.
This study brought to light the reality of the effects of road construction on the…
