Human Footprint and Forest Disturbance Reduce Space Use of Brown Bears (Ursus arctos) Across Europe.

ABSTRACT: Three-quarters of the planet's land surface has been altered by humans, with consequences for animal ecology, movements and related ecosystem functioning. Species often occupy wide geographical ranges with contrasting human disturbance and environmental conditions, yet, limited data availability across species' ranges has constrained our understanding of how human pressure and resource availability jointly shape intraspecific variation of animal space use. Leveraging a unique dataset of 758 annual GPS movement trajectories from 375 brown bears (Ursus arctos) across the species' range in Europe, we investigated the effects of human pressure (i.e., human footprint index), resource availability and predictability, forest cover and disturbance, and area-based conservation measures on brown bea

SUBMITTER: Hertel AG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11696834 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature