Bridging human mobility to animal activity: when humans are away, bears will play

• Published in: Proceedings of the 2nd ACM SIGSPATIAL International Workshop on Animal Movement Ecology and Human Mobility
• Main Authors: Robira, B., Corradini, A., Ossi, F., Cagnacci, F.
• Other Authors: Hachem, F., Ellis-Soto, D., Rutz, C., Dodge, S., Damiani, M.L.
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: English
• Published: Association for Computing Machinery 2022
• Subjects: Human Mobility; Nocturnality; Outdoor recreational activity; Strava-derived Cumulated Outdoor activity Index; Spatio-temporal risk avoidance; Ursus arctos; Settore BIO/07 - ECOLOGIA
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10449/78155; https://doi.org/10.1145/3557921.3565538

In the Anthropocene, findings on animal behavioral flexibility in response to anthropogenic changes are accumulating: human presence and activity affect the distribution, movement, activity rhythm, physiology, and diet of animal species. However, conclusions are limited by the lack of simultaneous quantitative data on both the animal and human side. Hence, the dynamic link between animal behavior and human activity and mobility is often poorly estimated. Based on long-term monitoring of a wild bear population in the Trentino region (10 bears monitored from 2006 to 2019; 20 bear-years) combined with human mobility data (Cumulative Outdoor activity Index, derived from the Strava Global Heatmap) and tourist count records, we investigated how spatial behavior and activity rhythms of bears change with variations in experienced human disturbance. We found that bears were mainly nocturnal and that, on an annual scale, nocturnality was associated with movement behavior, but both were independent of experienced human disturbance. Furthermore, nocturnality tended to increase in periods of more intense exploitation of outdoor areas by humans. Overall, these preliminary findings show that bears exhibit a notable behavioral flexibility to minimize their exposure to human presence. Through the application of different sources of human activity data, this work showcases that the integration of high resolution animal movement data with dynamic data on human mobility is crucial to meaningfully catch wildlife responses to anthropisation.