Modeling the Habitat Suitability of Persian Leopard (Panthera Pardus Saxicolor) in the Conservation Areas of Kohkiloye-and-Boyer-Ahmad, Iran

The study of the habitat of Persian leopard as a keystone effective species in the ecosystem services is significantly important in terms of protection. Habitat modeling and preparing the suitability map of that habitat is one of the ways of obtaining information and identifying activity and behavior of species .

   Maxent method was used in the presence data of the leopard and contributing factors in species distribution. Ultimately, habitat suitability maps obtained from this method were validated by using ground monitoring, and are under the curve (AUC) for ROC. The most suitable habitat for this species was introduced.

 Results showed that distance from herds of wild goats is the most important factor in the distribution of Persian leopard in this province, and several factors including distance from the protected areas, slopes, distance from the environmental protection checkpoints, distance from rivers, distance from mines, geographic aspects, distance from water resources, elevation, distance from roads and distance from villages were the other important factors affecting the species habitat suitability. Also, the most favorable habitat in Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad province is in cold regions at an altitude of 3300-3700 m, in tropical regions of 2000 to 2500, and on slopes more than 30% and in the west northwest and the north directions.

based on the hidden correlations between the variables used in modeling habitat desirability of the leopard, the model with high performance and accuracy (AUC=0.927) predict desirable and undesirable areas for habitat of this species.