Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

• Fateme Bagheri Azghadi ¹
• Azita Farashi ²
• Mohammad Sadegh Farhadinia ³

¹ Master student, Department of Environmental Science, Faculty of Natural Resources and Environment, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran

² Department of Environmental Sciences , Faculty of Natural Resources and Environment, Ferdowsi university of mashhad

³ Research Fellow, Oxford Martin School and Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

Abstract

Today, climate change is one of the biggest challenges of the current century and affects various aspects of life. Large mammals are no exception to this rule, and climate change affects their habitat conditions and distribution. This research aims to assess Climate Change Impacts on the efficiency of protected areas and to model the distribution of Persian Gazella. In order to predict the distribution of this species in current and future conditions, the weighted Mahalanobis modeling approach was used. Based on the model used, about 31.48% of the studied area was identified as a suitable habitat at the present. The overlap between protected areas and suitable habitats was 16.42%. The research findings showed that by 2070, under the optimistic scenario of the BCC-CSM2-MR and MRI-ESM2-0 models, 5.78% and 34.83% of the habitats will be lost, respectively, and under the pessimistic scenario of these models, respectively, 39.8% and 2.30% of the favorable habitat of the Gazella species will be lost.

Keywords

• Large Mammals
• Habitat Changes
• Suitable Habitat
• Weighted Mahalanobis Modeling

Main Subjects

• Climatology