The Rauischholzhausen Agenda for Road Ecology

By Inga A. Roedenbeck, L. Fahrig, C. Findlay, J. Houlahan, Jochen A. G. Jaeger, Nina Klar, S. Kramer‐Schadt, E. A. van der Grift. 2007

382 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Despite the documented negative effects of roads on wildlife, ecological research on road effects has had comparatively little influence on road planning decisions. We argue that road research would have a larger impact if researchers carefully considered the relevance of the research questions addressed and the inferential strength of the studies undertaken. At a workshop at the German castle of Rauischholzhausen we identified five particularly relevant questions, which we suggest provide the framework for a research agenda for road ecology: (1) Under what circumstances do roads affect population persistence? (2) What is the relative importance of road effects vs. other effects on population persistence? (3) Under what circumstances can road effects be mitigated? (4) What is the relative importance of the different mechanisms by which roads affect population persistence? (5) Under what circumstances do road networks affect population persistence at the landscape scale? We recommend experimental designs that maximize inferential strength, given existing constraints, and we provide hypothetical examples of such experiments for each of the five research questions. In general, manipulative experiments have higher inferential strength than do nonmanipulative experiments, and full before-after-control-impact designs are preferable to before-after or control-impact designs. Finally, we argue that both scientists and planners must be aware of the limits to inferential strength that exist for a given research question in a given situation. In particular, when the maximum inferential strength of any feasible design is low, decision makers must not demand stronger evidence before incorporating research results into the planning process, even though the level of uncertainty may be high.

Subfields: Ecology, Transportation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/042c48863785a33fd51798ccb4693ae5658fb651

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In Ecology

Citations in the corpus

Meta-analysis of the impacts of water management on aquatic communities (2008, result): “For example, we were unable to uncover a single B/A–C/I study on the effects of water management on downstream communities, even though this sort of design has considerably higher inferential strength than either B/A or C/I designs (Rodenbeck et al. 2007).”
The impacts of roads and other infrastructure on mammal and bird populations: a meta-analysis. (2010, result): “This would mean a substantial improvement of the current situation in which, in most cases, results of previous studies on ecological impacts are barely taken into account (OECD, 2002; Roedenbeck et al., 2007).”
Time series of landscape fragmentation caused by transportation infrastructure and urban development: a case study from Baden-Württemberg, Germany. (2007, background): “Examples of research questions that need to be investigated are (Trocmé 2002, Roedenbeck et al. 2007): What are the thresholds relating to the barrier effects?”
How Effective Is Road Mitigation at Reducing Road-Kill? A Meta-Analysis (2016, neutral): “Adding to the challenge for decision-makers is that information on mitigation effectiveness is often based on studies that permit, at best, weak inference, and yield low predictive power [20].”