摘要
Habitat suitability assessment of the free-ranging Père David's Deer (Elaphurus davidianus) in Shishou Milu National Nature Reserve is very important for conserving and restoring species diversity. From May to August 2019, presence data of Père David's Deer in the nature reserve were obtained by aerial photography and field survey. Based on the Google Earth images in May 27th, 2019, the object-based random forest classification method was used to classify the habitat types. Then we utilized Maximum Entropy (MaxEnt) model to assess the suitability of habitat in summer. Results showed that the accuracy of the MaxEnt model was excellent (mean AUC is 0.910). The distance from the bareland, the mudflat, and the forest were the main environmental factors influencing habitat suitability for Père David's Deer, with contribution rates of 35.2%, 34.5%, and 15.7% respectively. The sensitivity analysis of habitat factors showed that with the increase of the distance from mudflat, bareland and forest, the habitat suitability and the occurrence probability of Père David's Deer both decreased. The suitable habitat area was 338.84 ha, accounting for 27.41% of the whole core area. Areas with a high suitability for Père David's Deer were mudflat, grassland and bareland, which located in the central and southern region of the Nature Reserve. Results from our study suggest that the managers need to build a diversified landscape in the reserve and establish new ex-situ conservation area in the middle Yangtze basin.
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