RT Journal Article
T1 Human Footprint and Forest Disturbance Reduce Space Use of Brown Bears (Ursus arctos) Across Europe
A1 Hertel, Anne G.
A1 Selva Fernández, Nuria
A1 Barba, Marta de
AB Three-quartersof the planet's land surface has been altered by humans, with consequences for animal ecology, movements andrelated ecosystem functioning. Species often occupy wide geographical ranges with contrasting human disturbance and environmentalconditions, yet, limited data availability across species' ranges has constrained our understanding of how human pressureand resource availability jointly shape intraspecific variation of animal space use. Leveraging a unique dataset of 758 annualGPS movement trajectories from 375 brown bears (Ursus arctos) across the species' range in Europe, we investigated the effectsof human pressure (i.e., human footprint index), resource availability and predictability, forest cover and disturbance, and area-basedconservation measures on brown bear space use. We quantified space use at different spatiotemporal scales during thegrowing season (May–September): home range size; representing general space requirements, 10-daylong-distancedisplacementdistances, and routine 1-daydisplacement distances. We found large intraspecific variation in brown bear space use across allscales, which was profoundly affected by human footprint index, vegetation productivity, and recent forest disturbances creatingopportunity for resource pulses. Bears occupied smaller home ranges and moved less in more anthropized landscapes and inareas with higher resource availability and predictability. Forest disturbances reduced space use while contiguous forest coverpromoted longer daily movements. The amount of strictly protected and roadless areas within bear home ranges was too smallto affect space use. Anthropized landscapes may hinder the expansion of small and isolated populations, such as the Apennineand Pyrenean, and obstruct population connectivity, for example between the Dinaric Pindos population and the Alpine orCarpathian population. Our findings call for actions to maintain bear movements across landscapes with high human footprint,for example by maintaining forest integrity, to support viable bear populations and their ecosystem functions.
PB Wiley
SN 1354-1013
SN 1365-2486 (electrónico)
YR 2024
FD 2024-12
LK https://hdl.handle.net/10272/24853
UL https://hdl.handle.net/10272/24853
LA eng
NO Hertel, A. G., Parres, A., Frank, S. C., Renaud, J., Selva, N., Zedrosser, A., Balkenhol, N., Maiorano, L., Fedorca, A., Dutta, T., Bogdanović, N., Bragalanti, N., Chiriac, S., Ćirović, D., Ciucci, P., Domokos, C., Fedorca, M., Filacorda, S., Finďo, S., … De Barba, M. (2025). Human Footprint and Forest Disturbance Reduce Space Use of Brown Bears (Ursus arctos) Across Europe. In Global Change Biology (Vol. 31, Issue 1). Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.70011
NO This work was supported by Norges Forskningsråd (269863), Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (01LC1614A), Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR16-EBI3-0003), Colegiul Consultativ pentru Cercetare-Dezvoltareşi Inovare, BiodivERsA3-2015-147-BearConnect (96/2016), Narodowe Centrum Nauki (2016/22/Z/NZ8/00121, 2022/45/N/NZ8/04127), Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (HE 8857/1-1).
DS Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Huelva
RD 13 jun 2026