Biodiversity responses to landscape transformations caused by open-pit coal mining: An assessment on bats and dung beetles in a Colombian tropical dry forest

Abstract

Mining is a driver for biodiversity loss worldwide. However, studies of its effects on wildlife are scarce, and few involve activities and environmental management carried out by mining companies. We evaluated the effect of mining activity at multiscale landscape approach on the diversity of dung beetles and bats in the largest open-pit mine in Colombia, located in the tropical dry forest (TDF), one of the most threatened ecosystems due to human activities. The landscape scale effect assessment was carried out with a multiscale analysis at 0.2, 0.5, 1, 1.5, and 2 km of radius around sampling points in 2005–2006, 2009–2010, 2012–2013, and 2016–2017. The vegetation cover was measure through remote sensing and fieldwork for the four periods of each scale. Once predictor variables (vegetation cover and mining) were identified at a landscape scale for each buffer. Generalized linear models were run to know the scale of the effect, and to measure the effects of the vegetation transformation by mining activity on diversity (0D, 1D) and abundance. The scale of the effect for dung beetles, and bats corresponded mostly to 0.2 km. Diversity metrics showed positive relationships with the percentage of natural cover but negative with the percentage of non-natural cover. Dung beetles had higher resilience to mining activities than bats. The implementation of environmental management tools such as maintaining natural areas and rehabilitation of disturbed areas is necessary, especially to mitigate the impacts of open-pit coal mining on different groups of fauna in critically endangered ecosystems such as TDF.

Keywords

• Flying mammals
• Scarabaeinae
• Environmental management
• Neotropical wildlife
• Scale effect
• Threatened ecosystem