EFFECTS OF NOISE AND LANDSCAPE ON MAMMAL ROAD-KILL
The presence of the road network causes changes in land use and impacts on biodiversity. Biodiversity response to road impacts relates to species attributes and road-related characteristics. Fauna being run over is one of the most relevant impacts, and they do not occur randomly, as they are influenced by aspects of the road and the surrounding landscape. Together with roadkill, noise has a great influence on animal populations, especially because its impact zone has one of the greatest ranges in the surrounding landscape. The imminent expansion of highways and the increase in vehicle traffic makes it essential to study the impact of noise and pedestrian accidents on animal populations. Thus, the objective of the study is to evaluate the influence of noise and landscape structure on roadkill by birds and mammals on roads in the Cantareira-Mantiqueira Corridor. For this, sound data obtained from different sampling sites throughout the study area were used, from which the Normalized Difference Soundscape Index (NDSI) was extracted to infer anthropophony. The effect of mean NDSI value and land use classes on 267 roadkills of birds and mammals was evaluated. For both groups, a positive relationship was obtained between forest and agricultural cover and roadkill, while the proportion of water bodies and the NDSI were negatively related to occurrences for mammals. Although marginally significant, noise indicated an effect on bird trampling. The effect of anthropophony may be related to road avoidance behavior caused by noise and the lower occurrence of species around roads. Although it has gaps, associating how roadkills are influenced by noise provides a new perspective on the fauna mortality pattern on highways, which also allows the proposition of mitigation measures from different approaches. Due to the extent of its disturbance, it is plausible that anthropophony reflects on direct impacts related to highways, such as fauna mortality.