Environmental impacts of roads

Road ecology is the study of the ecological impacts (both positive and negative) of roads and highways (public roads). These effects may include local effects, such as on noise, water pollution, habitat destruction/disturbance and local air quality; and wider effects such as habitat fragmentation, ecosystem degradation, and climate change from vehicle emissions.

The design, construction and management of roads, parking and other related facilities as well as the design and regulation of vehicles can change the impacts to varying degrees. Roads are known to cause significant damage to forests, prairies, streams and wetlands. Besides the direct habitat loss due to the road itself, and the roadkill of animal species, roads alter water-flow patterns, increase noise, water, and air pollution, create disturbance that alters the species composition of nearby vegetation thereby reducing habitat for local native animals, and act as barriers to animal movements. Roads are a form of linear infrastructure intrusion that has some effects similar to infrastructure such as railroads, power lines, and canals, particularly in tropical forests.

Road ecology is practiced as a field of inquiry by a variety of ecologists, biologists, hydrologists, engineers, and other scientists. There are several global centers for the study of road ecology: 1) The Road Ecology Center at the University of California, Davis, which was the first of its kind in the world; 2) the Centro Brasileiro de Estudos em Ecologia de Estradas at the Federal University of Lavras, Brazil; 3) The Center for Transportation and the Environment, North Carolina State University; and 4) the Road Ecology Program at the Western Transportation Institute, Montana State University. There are also several important global conferences for road ecology research: 1) Infra-Eco Network Europe (IENE), which is international, but focused primarily on Europe; 2) International Conference on Ecology and Transportation (ICOET), which is also global in scope, but primarily focused on the US; 3) Australasian Network for Ecology & Transportation (ANET), which focuses on the Australasian (sub)continent; and 4) a potential Southern African road ecology conference, being considered by the Endangered Wildlife Trust.

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