ABSTRACT
The Great Lakes Basin is a highly developed region containing more than 30 million people. Anthropogenic linear features are extensive across populated regions around the globe, and roads and railways make up the predominant linear features on the landscape in the Great Lakes Basin. Such features likely play a large role in shaping the terrestrial ecology of the region. In this chapter, the authors' aims to understand the influence of tertiary roads and railways on two North American predators, the North American black bear and wolves. They use Akaike's Information Criterion (AICc), a model selection technique for small sample sizes, to understand what variables most influenced predator road use. To do this, they create six models with different combinations of road features associated with foraging opportunities and anthropogenic disturbance for wolves and black bears. They then use AICc to rank each model based on which habitat features best explained predator tertiary road use.
