Autumn and Winter Habitat Suitability Modeling of Wild Sheep (Ovis Orientalis) in Parvar Protected Area using MaxEnt method

Document Type : Ecology

Authors

1 Department of Environmental Science, Faculty of Natural Resources, University of Guilan, Sowme'eh Sara, POBox: 1144

2 Department of Environment. Faculty of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Hormozgan University, Bandar Abbas, POBox: 3995

3 Department of Veterinary Medicine, Islamic Azad University, Garmsar Branch

Abstract

Wild sheep (Ovis Orientalis) is one of important mammals in mountainous areas, that due to habitat destruction, competition of domestic animals and illegal hunting is in vulnerable condition.
According to recent phylogenetic studies, Wild Sheep population in Iran is divided into two subspecies Ovis vignei and Ovis orientalis and all Wild Sheep in central parts of Iran, are hybrids of the two subspecies. In present study, based on collected data of this species during autumn and winter 2015 in Parvar protected area the habitat suitability modeling of Wild sheephas been done using Maximum Entropy Modeling (MaxEnt). The used variables for this analysis were: slope, aspect, altitude, distance to spring, distance to roads, distance to canal, distance to village, distance to wells, land use and vegetation types. In total ninety points of species presence have been recorded in two seasons of autumn and winter, that which 25 points to test and 65 points to learning of model were been used. The results showed that model has high ability to predict the distribution of Wild sheep in research area and at the threshold level has had significant differences with random model (AUC= 0/812 P<0/0001). Results of the Jackknife Sensitivity Analysis showed that height of 2200 meters, slope of 40% in eastern aspect, grassland coverage with Artemisia and Astragalus, reducing the distance of the water resources in the region and increase of distance from roads and villages for Wild sheepare preferable in this seasons.

Keywords

Journal of Animal Environment
Volume 9, Issue 2
June 2017
Pages 17-24

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