Wildlands CPR’s Recently Updated Bibliographic Database

As part of Wildlands CPR’s mission to promote responsible, science-based public lands management, we have been working to provide forest officials, lawmakers, fellow conservationists, and the public with access to the latest scientific information pertaining to roads and their impacts to the land, wildlife and people.  One critical aspect of this effort is the maintenance of a bibliographic database that contains citations and abstracts to scholarly journal articles, government reports, conference proceedings, and other sources of information.  In this Field Notes, I present background on this database project and instructions on how to efficiently conduct a search.

In the beginning

Wildlands CPR recognized a need for this database over fifteen years ago.  Roads impact nearly every square mile of the United States.  Land managers, Forest Service officials, environmental advocacy organizations, and average citizens need to be able to access the ever-growing body of science that reveals these impacts to make informed decisions and develop scientifically sound policy.  Without this access, land managers are less likely to recognize and mitigate the myriad impacts roads have on our public health, wildlife, natural resources, and the landscape.  This database is an important, time-saving compendium of the most relevant scientific articles, conference proceedings, government reports, and gray literature designed to provide officials, citizens, and land management professionals with the necessary information to make sound, science-based land use decisions.  

So, in 1995, Wildlands CPR (then Road RIP) contacted renowned conservation biologist Reed Noss to assemble a bibliography of the literature discussing the ecological effects of roads.  Noss started with a bibliography he had compiled in 1987 and 1988 and began the process of updating it.  Under his direction, Dave Augeri, Susan Pierce, and Mike Eley worked to conduct extensive computer searches of literature on road impacts and entered their findings into a comprehensive database.  Additions from Steve Humphrey of the University of Florida, and Paul Paquet from the University of Calgary rounded out the initial effort.

The database today

The full database was completed in 1995, and in the 15 years since, Wildlands CPR has been conducting updates every two years to ensure that all relevant, newly published article citations are available to the public.  Our database is built from “source” databases including biological, ecological, natural resource, agricultural, and environmental databases.  In 2009, we used 17 primary keywords and 89 secondary keywords.  Access to the “source” databases was provided by the University of Montana and has expanded to include fisheries, zoological, environmental pollution, and leisure tourism databases.  

The 2009 update has pushed the total database to more than 20,000 individual citations, an increase of nearly 6,000 citations from 2007.  The vast proliferation of studies documenting the environmental effects of vehicles and the transportation infrastructure they require illustrates the ever growing importance of studying and quantifying how run-away road building and off-road vehicle use have impacted our environment.  Many of the most recent studies document impacts in Europe and China - and Chinese scientists have been especially industrious.  

From pollution partition studies, to impacts of roads on antelope on the Tibetan Plateau, to the effects of stormwater runoff, to the bioaccumulation of heavy metals by roadside plants, the database contains citations of almost every conceivable type of road impact study available.  Simply browsing through the citations can be an informative and interesting exercise.   It is important to remember that this database does not provide access to the full-text articles themselves.  It is a compilation of citations and abstracts.  To find the actual article, you have to take the citation as provided and track down the article itself.  Google Scholar and university collections are two of the best places to locate the full-text articles.

How to search the database

To access the database, simply click here or open the Wildlands CPR website: www.wildlandscpr.org.  Choose the “Resources Page” (on the top of the screen), and then “Bibliographic Database” (on the sidebar to the left).  This opens up the search form, which is pretty straightforward and operates like most standard on-line search tools.  The first field is for the words you want to search, separated by a space.  For example, if you want to search roads and vegetation, type roads vegetation into the field and all citations containing roads and vegetation will display.  There is an exclusion option which limits your results.  To exclude a term, simply type it into the second field.  For example, if you want to search roads and vegetation but not heavy metals, type roads vegetation into the first field and then “heavy metals” into the second.  The quotation marks will instruct the search to exclude all results that contain the phrase “heavy metals,” and these results will not be displayed.  

This bibliographic database is a great resource for anyone interested in the effects roads have on our wildlife, our landscapes, and our health.  The breadth of information and collection of citations offered in this resource is unique.  Contact Adam Switalski, Science Coordinator, if you have additional questions or for more information about the database.

— Greg Peters is an environmental writer, communications consultant, and recent graduate of the Environmental Studies Masters Degree program at the University of Montana.