Disentangling the relative effect of light pollution, impervious surfaces and intensive agriculture on bat activity with a national-scale monitoring program

• Published in: Landscape Ecology
• Main Authors: Azam, Clémentine, Le Viol, Isabelle, Julien, Jean-François, Bas, Yves, Kerbiriou, Christian
• Other Authors: Centre d'Ecologie et des Sciences de la COnservation (CESCO), Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle (MNHN)-Université Pierre et Marie Curie - Paris 6 (UPMC)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2016
• Subjects: Outdoor lighting; Urbanization; Land-use planning; Nightscape; [SDE.BE]Environmental Sciences/Biodiversity and Ecology; Pipistrellus pipistrellus
• Online Access: https://hal.sorbonne-universite.fr/hal-01346142; https://hal.sorbonne-universite.fr/hal-01346142/document; https://hal.sorbonne-universite.fr/hal-01346142/file/Azam_2016_Disentangling_the.pdf; https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-016-0417-3

International audience ObjectivesWe characterized the landscape-scale impacts of ALAN on 4 insectivorous bat species Pipistrellus pipistrellus, Pipistrellus kuhlii, Eptesicus serotinus, Nyctalus leisleri, and compared the extent of their effects to other major land-use pressures.MethodsWe used a French national-scale monitoring program recording bat activity among 2-km car transect surveys, and extracted landscape characteristics around transects with satellite and land cover layers. For each species, we performed multi-model averaging at 4 landscape scales (from 200 to 1000 m buffers around transects) to compare the relative effects of the average radiance, the proportion of impervious surface and the proportion of intensive agriculture.ResultsFor all species, ALAN had a stronger negative effect than impervious surface at the 4 landscape scales tested. This effect was weaker than the effect of intensive agriculture. The negative effect of ALAN was significant for P. pipistrellus, P. kuhlii and E. serotinus, but not for N. leisleri. The effect of impervious surface varied among species while intensive agriculture had a significant negative effect on the 4 species.ConclusionOur results highlight the need to consider the impacts of ALAN on biodiversity in land-use planning and suggest that using only impervious surface as a proxy for urbanization may lead to underestimated impacts on biodiversity.