Risk of Road Crossing Mortality to Wildlife - 2010

This dataset estimates the probability of road-crossing mortality to wildlife for roads throughout the Northeastern United States circa 2010. It is based on a model that relates traffic rate to wildlife mortality developed by Gibbs and Shriver (2002) for turtles and therefore the estimates are expected to be most accurate for relatively small, slow-moving wildlife species. Units are probability, 0-1 (e.g., a value of 0.25 is equivalent to an estimated 25% chance of mortality to wildlife that attempt to cross the road at that location.)Detailed documentation for the methods to derive the dataset are available from: DSL_traffic_documentation_07-2013.pdf . This dataset was developed as part of the Designing Sustainable Landscapes project led by Professor Kevin McGarigal of the University of Massachusetts and sponsored by the North Atlantic Landscape Conservation Cooperative; for more information about the entire project see: http://www.umass.edu/landeco/research/nalcc/nalcc.html .Important steps in developing the dataset include:1) Obtained raw road traffic data from TrafficMetrix (MPSI), primarily 2006 to 20122) Obtained roads dataset from Open Streetmap (OSM extract Jan. 2013)3) Developed a custom algorithm applying regression to predict traffic rate based on raw roads traffic data and intensity of development in areas surrounding the roads.4) Transformed estimated traffic rates to probability of road crossing mortality using the model of Gibbs and Shriver, 2002, "Estimated effects of road mortality on turtle populations," Conservation Biology, 16:1647-1652.