Habitat Suitability Modeling of Wild ‎Sheep (Ovis orientalis) in Markazi ‎Province by using Tree-Based ‎Models

To investigate habitat suitability of Wild Sheep in Markazi province, presence/absent methods including Random Forest (RF), and Classification and Regression Tree (CART) were used. For this purpose, 215 presence points of the species from Rasvand, Chal-khtoon,, Alvand, Polangab, Haftad Gholeh, Jasb, Kolahe, Bazarjan and Kharaghan protected areas along with 10000 pseudo-absences points from the entire province were included in the modeling. 30% of the presence/absence points were randomly assigned to the test. In performing of the model, 12 effective variables regarding distribution of Wild Sheepwere used. By using Youden test appropriate threshold was calculated. Validation of continuous and binary maps was performed by using related statistics. According to the results, the RF model was more efficient than the CART. The findings of the two models showed that the distance from the high quality rangelands with the type of Astragalus-Agropyrum, Artemisia sieberi-Stipa, has the most effect on the distribution of species. In the tree CART method, the altitude and distance from poor rangelands variables and in the RF method, altitude and slope are in the later stages from affecting the habitat suitability point of view. Alvand, Chal-khtoon, Rasvand, Kolahe, Kharqan and Jasb are areas that more than half of their extent is suitable for Wild Sheep as a potential habitat. This find reveal the need for more protection of Wild Sheep habitat in these areas. The results of this study show the efficiency of the RF method in habitat modeling as a nonparametric, flexible and interpretable method.