Integrated Modeling of Traffic and Wildlife Movement

There is no clear integration between regional and statewide transportation planning and conservation planning at the same scale. A critical component of regional conservation planning is understanding landscape connectivity and wildlife (individual and population) movement relative to housing and transportation infrastructure. As part of an inter-institution collaboration, including the proposing investigator (Shilling), the state (Departments of Fish and Game and Transportation) has been engaged in developing a plan for understanding connectivity, and mitigating for impacts to connectivity through smart land-use and transportation planning. One important element of this planning that has been missing has been a clear way to integrate the circuitry modeling for wildlife movement and connectivity with the equivalent modeling of traffic movement. Avoiding clashes between these interacting systems is important both from the point of view of conserving biodiversity and for protecting public safety. We propose to close the gap between advanced transportation network planning, analysis, and modeling enterprises and analogous wildlife movement and habitat connectivity modeling.