Survey the Effect of Scale on Leopard (Panthra Pardus Saxicolor) Habitat Modeling in Golestan National Park

To understand the effects of spatial scales on habitat modeling, it is necessary to apply a hierarchical spatial analysis of habitat as wildlife species exhibit varied reactions at different scales. Determining the ecologically relevant criteria at different spatial scales for predicting species occurrences is an important step when determining species–environment relationships. Therefore, species distribution modelling should consider all ecologically relevant spatial scales. Leopard belongs to the Palearctic Realm and its population has highly reduced in recent decades because of habitat destruction, hence is classified as endangered in the IUCN evalution.We used ecological niche factor analasis (ENFA) and Biomapper software to study the habitat of this species at different scales. Leopards’ habitat was modeled using ENFA method with layers ranging in resolution between 30 × 30, 60 × 60, 90 × 90, 120 × 120, 150 × 150, 180 × 180 and 210 × 210, cell sizes. According to the marginality, specialization and tolerance values of each resolution and also comparing its boyce index the best scales were found to be 60 × 60 and 90 × 90 cell sizes.