Assessment of the Conservation Area Network Development in Markazi Province Using Landscape Metrics

Prioritization and selection of sample areas from the whole nature is necessary to protect biodiversity. The main purpose of this study was to evaluate the development of a network of conservation areas in Markazi province using landscape metrics. For this purpose, we used MaxEnt, Marxan, Fragstat softwares and eight conservation criteria. Results were compared by using simulated sorting, greedy, best and max rarity algorithms and different landscape metrics. Maximum entropy method was used to model the wildlife habitats. The results of different protection scenarios showed that a 30% conservation target with a Boundary Length Modifier (BLM)of 30 is the most appropriate option. The simulated sorting algorithm provided  more acceptable results in all cases. Overlaping  the selected protection areas with the map of protected areas in Markazi province showed that only two protection criteria, out of the 8 selected criteria, are successful in providing the 30% protection target, which is not efficient in terms of achieving protection goals. In most scenarios, the overlap of the selected protection networks with the existing protected areas are less than 31.45%.Results of landscape metrics showed that the distance between conservation areas varies. The diversity and abundance  of the conservation areas are low. . Therefore, the conservation areas in Markazi province are among the vulnerable ecosystems with high fragility.