Assessment of the habitat of Persian leopard (Panthera pardus ‎saxicolo, Pocock 1927) in northeastern Iran‎

The Iranian leopard (Panthera pardus saxicolor, Pocock 1927) is one of the endangered species. For this reason, it is necessary to evaluate and protect the habitat of this species as a flag species that is placed at the top of the food pyramid. In this paper, the InVEST software is utilized to investigate the habitat quality of the Iranian leopard in Kopet Dag region in the northeast of Iran Then, 30 habitat variables are prepared using ArcGIS 10.3 software including climatic variables, topography, Landuse/Landcover, and leopard prey distribution. Then, InVEST software and Habitat Quality model are employed in Kopet Dag region to survey the habitat quality of the studied species. The input data of the InVEST software encompasses the current land use map, threat list tables, and habitat sensitivity. By employing the output of MaxEnt results, the information on the threat and habitat sensitivity tables are prepared and entered into the model. Ultimately, after running the model, the results indicate that 81.22% of the desirable habitats and 18.77% of the undesirable habitats overlap with Kopet Dag region. Moreover, the cities of Mashhad, Khaf, Neishabur, and Sabzevar, have the most desirable habitat respectively for the studied species. the results indicate that the most amount of destruction is in the west of Mashhad city and then in the center of Golbahar and Qochan citie.