Assessment of the Suitability of Particular Areas in Nepal for Snow Leopard Based on MaxEnt Modelling
Abstrakt
Habitat suitability models based on particular environmental variables are increasingly being used to predict occurrence of species for wildlife management issues. A variety of techniques and statistical methods are used in species distribution modelling.
In this case we use MaxEnt and data on the distribution of snow leopard in Nepal based on a large set of occurrence data collected from a much wider range of areas (9 districts) than in the previous studies. We used camera traps, scat collections and monitoring of fresh pugmarks and scrapes.
All our data based on scats were consistently genotyped to avoid misidentification of the species that produced them. All fresh pugmarks and scrapes were verified whether they originate from snow leopard by using movement pattern of snow leopard from camera trap data.
Altitude and annual mean temperature are important common factors contributing to snow leopard habitat suitability within the area studied, indicated by both the percentage contribution of environmental variables and jackknife test from MaxEnt model. Some other uncommon factors also seem to play a role as they were important in at least one of the analyses.
These were: distance from roads and precipitation of the driest month; however, their importance has to be considered with caution. To conclude: the habitat suitability models indicate that the main danger for snow leopard survival may be climate change and human expansion.
Both these phenomena will push the lower limit of its distribution upwards to higher elevations, which will entail two negative effects.