Abstract
This paper develops a new measure of the spatial pattern of roads in an area, named the Road Network Agglomeration Index (RNAI), and explores the impact of this dimension of road networks on spatial patterns of conservation networks. RNAI is more spatially descriptive than road density measures used commonly in analyses of conservation patterns, and easier to calculate than some other metrics of road network characteristics. The paper uses both RNAI and road density in a case study, performing regression analyses to explore the drivers of fragmentation of California’s network of public and private conservation lands. RNAI emerges as a consistently strong indicator of the degree of fragmentation of the reserve network, complementing road density as a measure of features of road networks that affect the pattern of protected areas in a watershed. We also find that private conservation serves more often to increase rather than decrease agglomeration of the reserve network.
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Notes
The variable D_ENN_CV is the difference between the Euclidean Nearest Neighbor—Coefficient of Variance for the network including both government and private reserves (T_ENN_CV) and for the network including just government reserves. If D_ENN_CV>0, private conservation increases agglomeration. The measure is undefined in watersheds that do not have significant private and public conservation
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Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to Jeff Savage for early research assistance and two anonymous referees for useful comments. The project was funded by Ralph Alig through the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station (Joint Venture Agreement No. PNW 06-JV-11261975-308) and by the Mealey-Boise Foundation. That funding supported Meidan Bu’s Ph.D. training at Oregon State University and is gratefully acknowledged. This paper is also based in part upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Hatch project # ILLU 05-0305, and upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. SES-0314445.
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Albers, H.J., Ando, A.W., Bu, M. et al. Road-network agglomeration, road density, and protected-area fragmentation. Lett Spat Resour Sci 5, 137–150 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12076-012-0078-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12076-012-0078-z