Department of Environmental Sciences & Engineering, Faculty of Agriculture & Natural Resources, Ardakan University, Ardakan, Iran.
Medicinal and Industrial Plants Research Institute, Ardakan University, Ardakan, Iran.
PLoS One. 2020 Nov 18;15(11):e0242432. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0242432. eCollection 2020.
Climate change, as an emerging phenomenon, has led to changes in the distribution, movement, and even risk of extinction of various wildlife species and this has raised concerns among conservation biologists. Different species have two options in the face of climate change, either to adopt or follow their climatic niche to new places through the connectivity of habitats. The modeling of interpatch landscape communications can serve as an effective decision support tool for wildlife managers. This study was conducted to assess the effects of climate change on the distribution and habitat connectivity of the endangered subspecies of Asian black bear (Ursus thibetanus gedrosianus) in the southern and southeastern Iran. The presence points of the species were collected in Provinces of Kerman, Hormozgan, and Sistan-Baluchestan. Habitat modeling was done by the Generalized Linear Model, and 3 machine learning models including Maximum Entropy, Back Propagation based artificial Neural Network, and Support Vector Machine. In order to achieve the ensemble model, the results of the mentioned models were merged based on the method of "accuracy rate as weight" derived from their validation. To construct pseudo-absence points for the use in the mentioned models, the Ensemble model of presence-only models was used. The modeling was performed using 15 habitat variables related to climatic, vegetation, topographic, and anthropogenic parameters. The three general circulation models of BCC-CSM1, CCSM4, and MRI-CGCM3 were selected under the two scenarios of RCP2.6 and RCP8.5 by 2070. To investigate the effect of climate change on the habitat connections, the protected areas of 3 provinces were considered as focal nodes and the connections between them were established based on electrical circuit theory and Pairwise method. The true skill statistic was employed to convert the continuous suitability layers to binary suitable/unsuitable range maps to assess the effectiveness of the protected areas in the coverage of suitable habitats for the species. Due to the high power of the stochastic forest model in determining the importance of variables, this method was used. The results showed that presence/absence models were successful in the implementation and well distinguished the points of presence and pseudo-absence from each other. Based on the random forests model, the variables of Precipitation of Driest Quarter, Precipitation of Coldest Quarter, and Temperature Annual Range have the greatest impact on the habitat suitability. Comparing the modeling findings to the realities of the species distribution range indicated that the suitable habitats are located in areas with high humidity and rainfall, which are mostly in the northern areas of Bandar Abbas, south of Kerman, and west and south of Sistan-Baluchestan. The area of suitable habitats, in the MRI-CGCM3 (189731 Km2) and CCSM4 (179007 Km2) models under the RCP2.6 scenario, is larger than the current distribution (174001 Km2). However, in terms of the performance of protected areas, the optimal coverage of the species by the boundary of the protected areas, under each of the RCP2.6 and RCP8.5 scenarios, is less than the present time. According to the electric circuit theory, connecting the populations in the protected areas of Sistan-Baluchestan province to those in the northern Hormozgan and the southern Kerman would be based on the crossing through the heights of Sistan-Baluchestan and Hormozgan provinces and the plains between these heights would be the movement pinch points under the current and future scenarios. Populations in the protected areas of Kerman have higher quality patch connections than that of the other two provinces. The areas such as Sang-e_Mes, Kouh_Shir, Zaryab, and Bahr_Aseman in Kerman Province and Kouhbaz and Geno in Hormozgan Province can provide suitable habitats for the species in the distribution models. The findings revealed that the conservation of the heights along with the caves inside them could be a protective priority to counteract the effects of climate change on the species.
气候变化作为一种新兴现象,导致了各种野生动物物种的分布、移动甚至灭绝风险的变化,这引起了保护生物学家的关注。不同的物种在面对气候变化时有两种选择,要么通过栖息地的连通性采用或跟随它们的气候小生境到新的地方。斑块间景观连通性的建模可以作为野生动物管理者的有效决策支持工具。本研究旨在评估气候变化对伊朗南部和东南部濒危亚种亚洲黑熊(Ursus thibetanus gedrosianus)分布和栖息地连通性的影响。该物种的存在点是在克尔曼省、霍尔木兹甘省和锡斯坦-俾路支斯坦省收集的。栖息地建模采用广义线性模型,以及包括最大熵、基于反向传播的人工神经网络和支持向量机在内的 3 种机器学习模型。为了实现集成模型,根据其验证得出的“准确率作为权重”方法,合并了上述模型的结果。为了在所述模型中使用伪不存在点,使用存在模型的集成模型来构建。建模使用了与气候、植被、地形和人为参数相关的 15 个栖息地变量。在 2070 年,选择了 BCC-CSM1、CCSM4 和 MRI-CGCM3 这三个一般环流模型,在 RCP2.6 和 RCP8.5 两种情景下。为了研究气候变化对栖息地连接的影响,将三省的保护区视为焦点节点,并根据电路理论和成对方法建立它们之间的连接。真技能统计用于将连续适宜性层转换为二进制适宜/不适宜范围图,以评估保护区在覆盖物种适宜栖息地方面的有效性。由于随机森林模型在确定变量重要性方面的强大功能,因此使用了这种方法。结果表明,存在/不存在模型在实施中是成功的,并且能够很好地区分存在点和伪不存在点。基于随机森林模型,降水最干燥季度、最寒冷季度降水和温度年变化范围这三个变量对栖息地适宜性的影响最大。将建模结果与物种分布范围的实际情况进行比较表明,适宜栖息地位于湿度和降雨量较高的地区,主要在班达尔阿巴斯南部、克尔曼北部和锡斯坦-俾路支斯坦西部和南部。在 RCP2.6 情景下,MRI-CGCM3(189731 平方公里)和 CCSM4(179007 平方公里)模型中的适宜栖息地面积大于当前分布(174001 平方公里)。然而,就保护区的表现而言,在每个 RCP2.6 和 RCP8.5 情景下,边界内最佳覆盖物种的保护区面积都小于当前时间。根据电路理论,将锡斯坦-俾路支斯坦省保护区的种群与北部霍尔木兹甘省和南部克尔曼省的种群连接起来,将需要穿越锡斯坦-俾路支斯坦省和霍尔木兹甘省的高地,而这些高地之间的平原将是当前和未来情景下的移动夹点。克尔曼省保护区的种群比其他两个省的种群具有更高质量的斑块连接。克尔曼省的 Sang-e_Mes、Kouh_Shir、Zaryab 和 Bahr_Aseman 地区以及霍尔木兹甘省的 Kouhbaz 和 Geno 地区可以为分布模型中的物种提供适宜的栖息地。研究结果表明,保护高地及其内部洞穴可以作为应对气候变化对物种影响的保护优先事项。