Ecological monitoring and assessment of habitat suitability for brown bear species in the Oshtorankooh protected area, Iran

Habitat assessment of species is one of the most important strategies to conserve biodiversity in the protected areas. The main objective of this study is to present an ecological assessment model for habitat management of brown bears using the MaxEnt algorithm in Oshtorankooh protected area, Lorestan. 55 presence points of brown bear and seven environmental variables including slope, elevation, distance from river, distance from road, distance from forest and grassland, distance from cropland and vegetation, and distance from rural area were applied for habitat assessment process. The importance of these variables was investigated by the Jaknikfe test and their predictive rate was assessed by response curves. The distance from the rural area and elevation were respectively the most important factors for modeling the distribution of brown bears in Oshtorankooh protected area. The final suitability map of habitat for brown bear species was classified into four categories: more suitable, suitable, less suitable and unsuitable. An area of 22566.7 ha was determined as a more suitable habitat for brown bears in the study area. The result indicates that the southern and central areas of the study area are more suitable for the species. The result of the model validity was obtained as 0.92, showing that the integrated model was very efficient in the habitat assessment process.