Document Type : Article
Authors
Department of Environmental Sciences, Bandar Abbas Branch, Islamic Azad University, Bandar Abbas, Iran
10.30473/eab.2025.72061.1963
Abstract
Protected areas are considered to be the basic strategies for the sustainable protection of biodiversity, the primary mechanism for maintaining biodiversity and a very important tool for maintaining the integrity of habitats. In recent years, systematic conservation planning approach has been developed. In this study, after determining the habitat variables affecting the habitat of the focal species of wild goat (Capra aegagrus) in Hormozgan province, the Biomod2 package was used to prepare habitat suitability maps. Then the communication design was performed with Circuitscape software and the electric circuit theory method was used to identify and investigate the habitat connections and migration corridors of the target species. In order to identify new protected areas, gap analysis was also applied. The results show that GBM, GLM, MaxEnt, MARS and GAM models are at a similar level to the best model in predicting wild goat distribution. The results of wild goat desirability model showed that the western, central and northern parts of the province have the highest probability of presence of the species and the southern and eastern parts have the lowest desirability for this species. According to Gap analysis, it seems that in addition to the expansion of Tarem and Hamag protected areas, Hormed protected areas to the south and north and Parzoiyeh to the southwest are also suitable for expanding the protection network of Hormozgan province.The development of the network of protected areas is considered a suitable solution for the protection of biodiversity.
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