Available online www.ejaet.com European Journal of Advances in Engineering and Technology, 2018, 5(7): 493-499 Research Article ISSN: 2394 - 658X 493 Noise Effects of Roads on Wildlife using GIS: A case study of Bartın– Karabük Highway in Turkey Ayhan Ateşoğlu, Metin Tunay, Talha Berk Arikan, Saffet Yildiz, Habibe Kahraman Bartın University, Faculty of Forestry, Bartın / Turkey aatesoglu@yahoo.com _____________________________________________________________________________________________ ABSTRACT While our forests cover 27% surface area of our country, wild areas correspond to 90% of our country together with forests and a size of 70 million hectares in Turkey. However sustainability of these sources will be possible by realizing protection and usage balance. Protection, development and sustainable management of our wildlife sources including our forests is the most basic responsibility. In this context it is necessary to minimize the human originated negative factors affecting wildlife under the scope of sustainable management principle. Most important of these structures are roads. In this context risk factors in wild life related areas should be determined by studies to be conducted on highways and necessary precautions should be taken. This study was conducted on 30 km long part of Bart ın-Karabük road majority of which is located in wild life area. Noise measurements were made in totally 94 points by using CELL633A1 noise level meter tool in the time period when traffic was crowded. All collected data was transferred to GIS environment. While modeling the spatial variation of road related noise, IDW (Inverse Distance Weight) interpolation was applied. After that audio surveillance was performed in points which were away from noise effect (46.4 dBc/Hz) and accordingly a noise map was formed along the road within the region up to that limit value. On the map that was formed, suggestions were made about precautions to be taken for wild animals. Key words: Wildlife, GIS, noise, highway ________________________________________________________________________________________ INTRODUCTION Liveliness in wild life is a perfect demonstration of the environment health. It is because, wild life can maintain its existence and show a good improvement in environments which are not unbalanced and are away from pollution. Environments whose ecological balance have not been destroyed are the places where wild life improves the best. Therefore, abundance and variety of the wild species in a place show that this place has the healthy life and all its conditions. The wild life is a unity which has its own rules. The natural balance in this unity is formed through the competition between the animal and plant species. Mankind could disturb this balance by creating a competition which is not on the same footing. One of the conditions that ruins the ecological balance for the wild life is sound, in other words; noise [1-2-3-4]. Human activities introduce anthropogenic noise sources into the environment across many elements of the landscape, including especially roads, airports, military bases, and cities. The impacts range in effects from mild to severe. They can impact wildlife species at both the individual and population levels. Roads form the basic infrastructure of the terrestrial transportation system by reticulating the land where they stand. Roads have bad influences on the dynamics of the ecosystem functions and the ecosystem components including the species compositions in the ecosystem (Fig. 1). Wild life (WL) biologists have observed that roads create an obstacle limiting the movements of the wild animals [5-6-7], form a death source for them [8], and cause behavior disorder in animals [9-10].