Habitat evaluation for Persian Gazelle in the Southern half of Markazi province, Iran

Markazi Province with its extended deserts and plains provides a suitable habitat for the Persian Gazelle. The habitat fragmentation due to the human-initiated activities is one of the major threatening factors against the species viability, especially Persian Gazelle.The present study is conducted using the MaxEnt method based on the maximum entropy or near to reality approach with 10 different variables and 30 focal points of Persian Gazelle. The study results show that a 215150.6 ha area equivalent to 14% in the southern half of Markazi Province covers a favorable habitat for the Persian Gazelle. The ROC model specifies that the validity of habitat suitability model is 0.985, suggesting the superior performance of MaxEnt method. Among the development variables, the highest impact on the Persian Gazelle ecology is assigned to distance to mines variable (10 km) while the lowest impact is related to distance from unpaved road variable. Further, among the ecologic variables, the highest and lowest impacts were detected for slope (0-5%) and height variables, respectively. The main objective followed in the present work is the protection of the extant population, inter-regional corridors, as well as live capturing, sending, and restoring the Persian Gazelle from other regions to Haftad Qolleh, West Haftad Qolleh, and Muteh.