Habitat Suitability Modelling of Wintering Populations of Asian Houbara bustard Chlamydotis macqueenii in Fars

Asian houbara are distributed from arid regions of China to the Arabian Peninsula. Populations of Asian houbara have been decreasing in most of its distribution range. This study employs Maxent modelling technique to investigate the suitability of potential wintering distribution of Asian houbara in the Fars province of Iran. A set of 12 data layers include two topographic variables, three land cover layers, three foot print layers and four bioclimatic layers is employed together with 19 presence- only records, obtained from fieldworks and Fars Department of Environment. Model fitness and performance of the accuracy of the model was assessed using the area under the receiver operating (AUC). The affecting factors in development of the model were determined by Jackknife test. The results show that the model has excellent predictive performance(AUC=0.98) and roughness is most important variable which affect the suitability of wintering potential distribution. Slope of the land, annual precipitation, precipitation of wettest quarter, mean temperature of coldest quarter, distance to dry farming, distance to mod-range land cover type (% 25-50%) and poor-range land cover type (% 25-50%) are the most important variables in the model. 21 percent of the study area have high suitability, while 17.5 percent have average suitability for wintering populations of houbara. 23 percent of habitats with high suitability and 11.8 percent of habitats with average suitability are in the protected areas.