توصيفگر ها :
اكوتوريسم , اولويت حفاظتي , زيرساخت هاي حمل و نقل , كيفيت زيستگاه , InVEST , Marxan
چكيده انگليسي :
Road networks as an integral part of the transportation infrastructure have deleterious ecological effects on habitats, wildlife populations and ecosystems. Vicinity impacts of roads on habitats in addition to habitat fragmentation have caused decrease in habitat quality and biodiversity decline. Thus, appropriate studies assessing and minimizing the ecological impacts of road networks on habitats and ecosystem services are essential. The present study takes the Chaharmahal & Bakhtiari province (Iran) as a case study, to incorporate the ecosystem services modeling in order to assess and decrease the ecological impacts of road networks which is one of the most important risk elements for valuable habitats and species of this province. For this purpose, first, the direct and indirect impacts of roads on social, economic and ecological conditions were identified. Then, the Spatial Road Disturbance Index, the Landscape Ecological Risk Index and the Kernel Density Estimation were used to model an overall road disturbances map in order to assess the ecological impacts of road networks on habitats and species of the province. After that, the ecosystem services including ecotourism and habitat quality for key species of the province were modeled. In order to model the ecotourism potential, the multi-criteria fuzzy model in GIS and Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) were used. In addition, the habitat quality of six species of conservation concern including wild sheep, Ovis orientalis Gmelin, wild goat, Capra aegagrus Erxleben, Persian leopard, Panthera pardus Pocock, brown bear, Ursus arctos, Persian squirrel, Sciurus anomalus and Eurasian badger, Meles meles were modeled using the Habitat quality model of InVEST software. According to the results of this part of the study, approximately 75% of the province was covered by natural areas of forests and rangelands and about 25% of the province has high potential for ecotourism developement. Moreover, around 26%, 20%, 35%, 32%, 20% and 45% of this province consisted of the most suitable habitats for Persian leopard, wild sheep, wild goat, brown bear, Persian squirrel and Eurasian badger, respectively. However, the high density of the road networks effects nearly 35% of the province in the north-eastern and central parts, considered as the suitable habitats for target species, which increased the necessity of developing the ecological compensation programs. Based on the results, the Tang-e-Sayyad, Sabzkouh and Helen protected areas needed restoration plans in terms of historic migratory corridors and wildlife warning signs. In addition, constructing the wildlife overpasses are needed in the Sabzkouh and Helen protected areas. One of the most effective solutions in this context was identifying the high priority areas for conservation using Marxan, a systematic conservation planning tool. For this purpose, after determination of efficient planning unit in terms of size, the layers of habitat quality and road disturbance were used as input data. Optimization using Marxan and considering the social and economic issues, showed that western, north-western and southern regions of the province should be given high conservation priority and are necessary for an efficient conservation network. Overall, the present study demonstrated that utilizing the integrated techniques and different kinds of models, might provide a powerful tool for assessing the ecological impacts of roads on wildlife habitats, for conservation planning and enhancing ecosystem services.
