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Predicting the impacts of lane additions to the Pan-American Highway bisecting the Guanacaste Conservation Area, Costa Rica

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  • Predicting the impacts of lane additions to the Pan-American Highway bisecting the Guanacaste Conservation Area, Costa Rica
Tom Langen, Clarkson University
Michelle Monge (National Autonomous University of Costa Rica).
Joel Saez (National Autonomous University of Costa Rica)
Planning for Transportation Ecology
Keeping Up With the Pace of Latin America

Road development in Latin America is growing dramatically along with increased ownership of cars and reliance on vehicle transport for international trade. The Pan-American Highway (PAH), the longest roadway on earth, is experiencing growth in traffic volume in Central America, resulting in plans to increase its capacity by lane-widening, adding lanes, and dividing the two directions of traffic flow. PAH bisects the Guanacaste Conservation Area in northwestern Costa Rica, one of the largest protected areas in Central America. The road subdivides a migratory corridor that animals from the size of butterflies to large mammals use to move between evergreen montane forest and lowland deciduous tropical dry forest. We report on a decade's work on road mortality patterns, use of culverts as passage structures, and analysis of vegetation patterns and landscape to understand how animal movements are affected by the current roadway, and to predict the consequences of converting a two-lane highway with a narrow verge into the proposed four-lane divided expressway. Our research has applications to many other wildlands parks and protected areas in Latin America that are crossed by public highways and are experiencing road expansion and growth in traffic volumes.

This talk is part of the Latin American session chaired by Anthony Clevenger.

Latin America
road development
protected area conservation
ICOET 2025 — International Conference On Ecology and Transportation