مدل پراکنش گونه ای

Specialized species living in high mountain areas face more threats compared to species living in low altitudes, primarily due to habitat destruction or fragmentation and climate change.The Caspian snowcock is a  species with a specialized ecological niche and serves as an indicator of mountain ecosystems. Despite the high sensitivity of this species to habitat changes and its role as an umbrella or flagship species in mountainous areas, there is a scarcity of data on the ecology of this species. In the current study, we predicted the geographical range of this bird using 262 presence localities and 10 environmental and anthropogenic variables within an ensemble framework, resulting from five modeling algorithms. Based on the ensemble model, about 96527.4 km2 (5.8%) of the country was identified as a suitable habitat for the Caspian snowcock. Potential habitats of the species appeared to be strongly influenced by topographical roughness (30.02), average annual temperature (29.61), altitude (18.57), and isothermality (14.14). About 16.04% and 23.13% of the predicted suitable range overlapped with no-hunting  and protected areas. It is suggested that effective conservation measures should be taken by focusing on the possible threats caused by human activities, including the development of tourism infrastructure, road networks, overgrazing, and poaching.

This study was aimed to predict the potential distribution of Ferula ovina (Boiss) in Feridoonshar, in the western part of Isfahan province, and to produce species response curves in relation to the environmental variables using the Generalized Linear Model (GLM). The presence and absence of the species in 278 sites (including 138 presence sites & 140 absence sites) were collected using random stratified sampling. Digital elevation model was used to produce elevation classes, aspect and slope maps. Seventy soil profiles and 10 climate stations data were used to produce 31 environmental maps including climate and soil maps using kriging methods. According to the results, the presence of Ferula ovina was correlated with silt percent, average annual temperature, elevation, organic matter content, soil saturation percentage and CaCO3 content. The produced species distribution model had high accuracy, as indicated by calculated Kappa coefficient (0.79) and ROC area under curve plots (0.83). The result of this study can be, therefore, used in the rehabilitation and restoration of this valuable species in the rangeland ecosystems.