Wildlife population trends and Investigating land cover changes using landscape ecological approach in Golestan National Park, Iran

Natural and evolutional changes in ecosystems and pressures of human activities might cause changes in natural ecosystems. These changes affect the population and distribution of wildlife. Facing the current environmental challenges for protected areas, we asked how land cover changes affect distribution and population of large mammals in almost four decades in Golestan National Park. We extracted land cover data from the Landsat satellite for the past 44 years and classified them into three main habitat types including forest, scrubland and steppe areas using post-classification analysis approach in Arc-GIS and Envi 5.3k. The population data of Caspian red deer (Cervus elaphus), bezoar goat (Capra aegagrus), urial (Ovis vignei), goitered gazelle (Gazella subgutturosa), Persian leopard (Panthera pardus) from 1972 to 2017 was also collected. Our results showed that forests and scrublands have been shrinking 13.54% (4689 ha), 7.26% (2377 ha), respectively; however, In addition spatial analysis using the metric of remote sensing showed that the forest and scrubland habitats are under fragmentation. steppe area has increased 34% (6821ha). In addition, other results demonstrated that population of mammals have faced a severe decline: Caspian red deer (2100 vs. 260 individuals between 1974-2014), bezoar goat (4250 vs. 519 individuals between 1978-2014), Urial (4000 vs. 3800 between 1967-2017). We concluded that understanding the trends of land cover changes need to be taken into account to manage wildlife population trends.