Invasive alien plants are considered a major driver of global biodiversity loss. Therefore, there is a huge demand of spatial and temporal data on their distribution for investigating possible drivers of species invasions and for predictions of future distributions. We use Google Street View imagery (GSV) as a new source of spatial and temporal data. GSV provides millions of panoramic views along road networks worldwide allowing for the identification of many plant species, including invasive ones. Thus, GSV has a great potential to support ecological research in documenting species distribution, but reliable validation of its precision and accuracy is lacking. Here, we describe and evaluate an approach using GSV to visually track the spread of invasive alien plants, the North American goldenrods (Solidago canadensis and S. gigantea) occurring abundantly along road network in Poland (Central Europe). We determined presence/absence of the species along 160 randomly selected transects of a length of 500 m by visual inspection of GSV images and compared it with field surveys at the same transects. We show that the occurrence of goldenrods in GSV is a reliable predictor of their occurrence in the wild. Sampling parameters, like road width, season when GSV pictures were taken and number of months elapsed since taking the GSV pictures, did not change the correlation between outputs of the two methods (GSV and field sampling). Furthermore, both the occurrence of goldenrods observed in the field and their occurrence in GSV have similar relations to habitat characteristics investigated (the same direction of relationship and similar effect size). We suggest Google Street View images may be an additional tool to be used in the detection and tracking of the spread of invasive alien plants along roadsides. The approach may be useful in assessing temporal changes in roadside vegetation and managing problematic plant species across large spatial scales and may contribute to the further development of more efficient sampling methods in ecological studies.

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1. The total length of railways worldwide exceeds 1 million kilometres and recent railway development directly impacts wildlife because of animal-train collisions.Few studies, however, have analysed factors driving ungulate-train collisions.2. We analysed over 3,500 ungulate-train collisions including roe deer, red deer, wild boar, and moose collected in 2012-2015 in Poland. We compared train traffic characteristics (e.g. traffic intensity, speed, rail curvature), land-use and habitat characteristics (e.g. share of forests and build-up areas) and local ungulate population densities at collision sites and random sites distributed along the rail network. 3. Forest coverage generally increased, while urban areas decreased ungulate collision risk. Local density of ungulate species had a strong positive relation to the relative collision risk in all four ungulate species, but above certain densities, the risk levelled off for all four species. 4. Train speed and train traffic intensity were positively associated with elevated collision risk in all four species, but the latter in a nonlinear manner reached an asymptote at the level of c. 10 trains per day. Rail curvature also increased probability of collisions with roe deer and red deer and possibly also wild boar. 5. Mortality rate of ungulates on railways in Poland is estimated to be 0.13%-0.42% of annual hunting bags of studied species assuming that only one individual is killed at each occasion and ignoring undetected collisions. These values are expected to increase in the near future due to increasing train speed in Central European countries. 6. Synthesis and applications. Ungulate-train collisions spots are characterized by surrounding forest, rail curvature, high train speed, and a moderate to high train traffic intensity. To reduce collision risk in a cost-effective way, we suggest prioritization | 2631 Journal of Applied Ecology JASIŃSKA et Al.

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The central tenet of European farmland ecology is that agricultural intensification during the 20th century was largely responsible for dramatic declines in species abundances. However, during this time, human rural settlements were also undergoing radical changes through modernization, with undocumented biodiversity impacts in this important wildlife habitat. We performed the first ever large‐scale study to disentangle the impact of these simultaneous processes on farmland bird diversity in 104 Polish villages. We show that modernized villages and their surrounding agricultural fields had 50–60% fewer birds than those in and around comparable older villages. The relative contribution of modernization versus agricultural intensification to predicted bird declines was 88% versus 12% for bird communities in villages and 56% versus 44% in surrounding croplands, with considerable variation among ecological species subgroups. These results challenge our current understanding of agricultural ecosystem ecology and how best to implement conservation measures costing billions of euros annually.

1. Invasive alien species are among the most concerning threats to native biodiversity world-wide, and the level of landscape heterogeneity is considered to affect

Agriculture intensification drives changes in bird populations but also in the space use by farmland species. Agriculture in Eastern Europe still follows an extensive farming model, but due to policy shifts aimed at rural restructuring and implementation of government subsidies for farmers, it is being rapidly intensified. Here, we aimed to document the ranging behaviour and habitat use of a declining farmland bird of prey—Montagu’s Harrier—and to compare it to findings from Western Europe. In 2011–2018, 50 individuals were followed with GPS loggers in Eastern Poland to study species spatial ecology. We found home ranges (kernel 90%) to be considerably large: 67.3 (± 42.3) km2 in case of males, but only 4.9 (± 6.1) km2 in females. Home ranges overlapped by 40%, on average, with other males in colonies and by 61%, on average, between consecutive breeding seasons of a particular male. The average daily distance travelled by males and females reached, respectively, 94.5 and 45.3 km, covering a daily home range of 32.3 and 3.1 km2. Individuals foraged up to 35 km from nests (3.5 km on average). Daily distance travelled and daily home ranges varied across the breeding season, in case of females being shortest in July, but sharply increasing in August. Also, individuals with breeding success had higher daily distance travelled but smaller daily home ranges. Average harriers’ distance to nest was generally increasing over the season, but was also changing over time of day: birds were closest to nest during night time, but at the end of the season, males roosted up to 16 km from the nest. While foraging males slightly preferred grasslands, higher elevation and smaller land-use patches, they avoided slopes and proximity of roads. We conclude that the surprisingly large home ranges of breeding harriers may suggest reduced prey availability or high fragmentation of hunting areas, both driving birds to utilise large areas and potentially contributing to population decline.