Cohnecs-IT phase 2

Longitudinal  connectivity  and  potential  of  verges  as  habitats  in terms  of  their  nature,  species  and  context  :  a  systematic  review  of  transport infrastructure

Habitat fragmentation caused by linear transportation infrastructures (LTIs) is well documented and many syntheses already exist about this issue. However, the potential of habitat and corridor of LTI verges appear in dispersed and even sometimes contradictory publications, without any global analysis. In the context of the call made by CILB-ITTECOP-FRB in 2014, literature has been collected about this topic, to initiate a systematic review. It was the goal of the COHNECS-IT project, led by the National Museum of Natural History (UMS PatriNat and UMR Cesco) with its partners Irstea, UPMC, Cerema and Inra. The systematic review is a tool to transfer knowledge from the research domain to the operational one. It is a bibliographic synthesis exercise with a standardized methodology proposed at the international scale by the Collaboration for Environmental Evidence (CEE). Up to now, a part of this literature has been processed, which led to the publication of a systematic review, including a meta-analysis, in the Environmental Evidence Journal in 2017 (Villemey et al.). Because of the very important number of publications collected, a part of the literature was put aside in 2015. This part of the gathered literature deals with the role of roads/highways and waterways for the non-insect biodiversity. The aim is now to finish the COHNECS-IT project by dealing with these publications. In this way, the whole literature about the five LTIs (railways, pipelines, electric lines, roads/highways, waterways) will have been processed for all the biodiversity. The goal is to publish a second systematic review using the same protocol (Jeusset et al., 2016) than for the first systematic review. This second systematic review will concern the habitat and corridor functions of the five considered LTIs for the non-insect biodiversity. It will include narrative syntheses and, if possible, at least one meta-analysis. An executive synthesis (a document of a few pages written in French) will also be produced for practitioners, to translate to them the main conclusions regarding LTI verges management.