While human activity has had a massive effect on the natural world, a new study from North Carolina State University finds that climate is still the most influential factor in determining where mammals can thrive.
While human activity has had a massive effect on the natural world, a new study from North Carolina State University finds that climate is still the most influential factor in determining where mammals can thrive. The work sheds light on how climate change will affect wildlife populations.
Roland Kays, lead author of a paper on the work, said the study’s goal was to compare the importance of climate versus human factors in where mammals chose to live. To do so, researchers collected data on 25 mammal species from 6,645 locations across the United States. The study is one of the largest camera trap data analyses ever done. The data came largely from Snapshot USA, which is a national mammal camera trap survey conducted with collaborators across the country.
“One of our ideas was that humans may have changed our landscape so much that we have become the primary determinants of which animals live where,” said Kays, who is a research professor at NC State and scientist at the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences. “What we found was that in fact humans were not the most important. Climate, including temperature and the amount of rainfall, was the most important factor across most of the species we observed.”
However, human activity in the form of large population centers and agriculture was still a significant factor in where mammals chose to live. Some species struggled in the presence of cities and farms, Kays said, but many thrived.
Read more at North Carolina State University
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