Chapter 19
What’s Next? Railway Ecology in the 21st
Century
Rafael Barrientos, Luís Borda-de-Água, Pedro Brum, Pedro Beja
and Henrique M. Pereira
Predicting is very difficult, especially about the future, attributed
to Niels Bohr.
Abstract As societies realise the importance of maintaining biodiversity and,
accordingly, acknowledge the need for monitoring, minimizing and compensating
the impacts of socioeconomic activities, including transportation, more scientists
will be called to address these societal challenges. Railway Ecology is emerging in
this context as a relatively new field to identify and provide solutions to the specific
environmental problems associated with the building and operation of railways,
particularly their impacts on wildlife. This is an interdisciplinary field that uses and
draws methods from other disciplines, ranging from ecology and genetics, to
statistics and computer simulations. Here, we summarize the guidelines to address
railway-related biodiversity conservation problems as they were identified in the
several chapters of this book, and recommend lines for future research.
Keywords Climate change Á Environmental sustainability Á Linear infrastructures Á
Railway ecology
R. Barrientos Á L. Borda-de-Água Á P. Beja Á H.M. Pereira
CIBIO/InBIO, Centro de Investigação em Biodiversidade e Recursos Genéticos,
Universidade do Porto, Campus Agrário de Vairão, Rua Padre Armando Quintas,
4485-661 Vairão, Portugal
R. Barrientos (&) Á L. Borda-de-Água Á P. Beja Á H.M. Pereira
CEABN/InBIO, Centro de Ecologia Aplicada “Professor Baeta Neves”,
Instituto Superior de Agronomia, Universidade de Lisboa, Tapada da Ajuda,
1349-017 Lisboa, Portugal
e-mail: barrientos@cibio.up.pt
P. Brum
Faculdade de Ciências Socias e Humanas da Universidade Nova de Lisboa,
Lisboa, Portugal
H.M. Pereira
German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv)
Halle-Jena-Leipzig Deutscher Platz 5e, 04103 Leipzig, Germany
© The Author(s) 2017
L. Borda-de-Água et al. (eds.), Railway Ecology,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-57496-7_19
311
What’s Next? Railway Ecology in the 21st
Century
Rafael Barrientos, Luís Borda-de-Água, Pedro Brum, Pedro Beja
and Henrique M. Pereira
Predicting is very difficult, especially about the future, attributed
to Niels Bohr.
Abstract As societies realise the importance of maintaining biodiversity and,
accordingly, acknowledge the need for monitoring, minimizing and compensating
the impacts of socioeconomic activities, including transportation, more scientists
will be called to address these societal challenges. Railway Ecology is emerging in
this context as a relatively new field to identify and provide solutions to the specific
environmental problems associated with the building and operation of railways,
particularly their impacts on wildlife. This is an interdisciplinary field that uses and
draws methods from other disciplines, ranging from ecology and genetics, to
statistics and computer simulations. Here, we summarize the guidelines to address
railway-related biodiversity conservation problems as they were identified in the
several chapters of this book, and recommend lines for future research.
Keywords Climate change Á Environmental sustainability Á Linear infrastructures Á
Railway ecology
R. Barrientos Á L. Borda-de-Água Á P. Beja Á H.M. Pereira
CIBIO/InBIO, Centro de Investigação em Biodiversidade e Recursos Genéticos,
Universidade do Porto, Campus Agrário de Vairão, Rua Padre Armando Quintas,
4485-661 Vairão, Portugal
R. Barrientos (&) Á L. Borda-de-Água Á P. Beja Á H.M. Pereira
CEABN/InBIO, Centro de Ecologia Aplicada “Professor Baeta Neves”,
Instituto Superior de Agronomia, Universidade de Lisboa, Tapada da Ajuda,
1349-017 Lisboa, Portugal
e-mail: barrientos@cibio.up.pt
P. Brum
Faculdade de Ciências Socias e Humanas da Universidade Nova de Lisboa,
Lisboa, Portugal
H.M. Pereira
German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv)
Halle-Jena-Leipzig Deutscher Platz 5e, 04103 Leipzig, Germany
© The Author(s) 2017
L. Borda-de-Água et al. (eds.), Railway Ecology,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-57496-7_19
311