Investigation of coastline change of the Urmia Lake using remote sensing and GIS (1990 - 2012)

The study on water level fluctuation in the Urmia Lake has become of a great importance in recent years. This is due to the importance of the position of this lake as a natural heritage at an international level. The water level decrease at the Urmia Lake during the recent years has made it necessary to address the matter more than before. Investigation and assessment of changes in the Lake is necessary because it is the largest international wetland and one of the Iranian National Parks. The main purpose of the current study was to investigate changes in the Lake water levels using satellite imagery and GIS technique, preparing and processing multispectral Landsat images in 1990, 1998, 2006 and 2011, classifying the images and extract the land use map for these four time periods. Results of this study indicated that the Urmia Lake has faced significant decrease in water level during the past twenty years, especially in the past decade. Also, the surface area of the Lake decreased by 3052 km2 and the salt area increased from 1990 to 2011. The present study indicate the incidence and development of environmental crisis in the region. Hence, it is essential to take into account the entire social, economic, and environmental considerations as well as all the macro-environmental issues at a regional scale to save the Urmia Lake

APPLICATION OF LANDUSE CHANGE MODELING FOR PROTECTED AREA MONITORING

Globally, land use change impacts biodiversity, water and radiation budgets, emission of green house gases, carbon cycling, and livelihoods. The study of LUCC and its dynamics is crucial for environmental management, especially with regard to sustainable agriculture and forestry. Different models, in terms of structure and application, have been used to understand LUCC dynamics. The present study aims to simulate the spatial pattern of land use change in Varjin protected area, Iran. Land cover maps for 2000 and 2010 were prepared using TM images. Images were classified using supervised classification. CA Markov model was used to predict land cover map for 2020 as a top-down approach in investigating land use change. A comparison was made between the predicted and older land use map. The findings of the study suggest that the region will experience a degradation in poor range and increase rate in urban from 2010 to 2020. Moreover, if the trend of land exploitation and current management policy of the region continue as before, the region will experience with urban development and degradation in the Varjin protected area

Modeling Habitat Suitability of the Red-backed Shrike (Lanius Collurio) in the Irano-Anatolian Biodiversity Hotspot

Identifying suitable habitats of species is essential knowledge to conserve them successfully. Human activities cause the reduction of population size and habitat suitability of many species. Red-backed Shrike is widespread in western Palearctic. However, the population of this specie has declined in its geographical range due to the loss of suitable habitats. Therefore, it is necessary to identify its suitable habitats and factors affecting species habitat suitability and to protect its reduction population size. The aim of the present study was to identify the suitable habitat of the Red-backed Shrike and determine the most important predictors of its suitable habitat in Irano-Anatolian biodiversity hotspot.To achieve this goal,species presence points were first collected and seven environmental variables related to climate, topography and anthropogenic activities, were used to construct the species habitat suitable model. Models were built using five distribution modeling methods: Maxent, GAP, GLM, RF and GBM in sdm package. Then the models were ensemble from 5 different models and the final model was constructed. The results of this study showed that the most suitable habitats of this species are in the western and northern parts of the area of study. The mean annual temperature with 41% contribution was the most important variable in constructing the habitat suitability model for this specie. In addition, climate variables with 75% contribution were identified as the most important habitat suitability factor for this specie.Also in relation to conservation of the Red-backed Shrike species in the Irano-Anatolian region, it can be stated that the extent of distribution and presence of this specie has been extended to the northern latitudes due to climate change. As a result, the temperature and climate factor should be given special attention in the management of bird habitats in this area

Genetic structure of Afghan Pika (Ochotona rufescens) in Northern Khorasan Province

The aim of this research was to study the genetic structure of the Afghan Pika’s (Ochotona rufescens) populations in Northern Khorasan province in order to determine their isolation rate. A total of 122 samples from four sample groups (Ghorkhod, Golol-Sarani, Salouk and Sarigol) were selected and the genotypic features were detected using 7 microsatellite loci. The results showed that all of the loci were subject to polymorphism and the allele ranged from 2 – 7. Significant Fst and Rst values were found among the populations based on the AMOVA test. Based on the Assignment Test, more than 90 percent of the individuals of the populations belonged to their original population (only 10 percent of the individuals belonged to other populations). A Paired comparison of genetic differentiation between the populations revealed significant deferences among them. The results of the Prichard model grouping showed that the samples collected in this study were approximately 7 groups. The results of AMOVA analysis revealed a significant genetic structure among different populations. Also, the majority of the variance is related to the variance within the population. There seems to be a different but small genetic structure among the studied populations

Anthropogenic and natural fragmentations shape the spatial distribution and genetic diversity of roe deer in the marginal area of its geographic range

Habitat destruction and fragmentation are major factors in the destruction of genetic diversity and affect the movement behavior of the Roe deer population in the remaining habitats. Here, we study the population and landscape genetics of Capreolus capreolus (roe deer) in northern and northwestern Iran using twelve polymorphism microsatellite markers. From 111 total specimens, 63 had successful extraction (6 feces, 35 tissues, 9 bones, and 13 antlers). We considered 30 microsatellite polymorphic loci, of which only 12 were amplified for our further analysis. For genetic diversity analysis, the Weir-Cockerham method was applied to measure the inbreeding coefficient (FIS) and fixation index (FST) for each locus as well as for each population. For landscape genetics, the susceptibility patterns of genetic variations were assessed using three hypotheses including isolation by distance (IBD), isolation by environment (IBE), isolation by resistance (IBR), and individual landscape genetic analysis. A habitat suitability map as an indicator of landscape resistance was constructed from several species distribution models (SDMs) algorithms including Generalized Boosting Models (GBM), Maximum Entropy (Maxent), Random Forest (RF), Generalized Linear Model (GLM), Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines (MARS) and artificial neural networks (ANN) and an ensemble model. Our estimated FIs index showed that the Golestan, Arasbaran, and Guilan populations had the highest and lowest genetic diversity among roe deer populations. According to the Fst criterion, our results showed that Golestan and East Azarbaijan (Arasbaran) had the highest and Mazandaran had the lowest genetic distance patterns. Our results do not suggest that there is high genetic differentiation for roe deer in the region, with high levels of gene flow between study areas. We found that geographic distance has no significant relationship with genetic distance and that there is no significant relationship between the ecological niche non-similarity matrix and the genetic distance matrix. The most influential factors affecting gene flow in roe deer were aspect and elevation variables. The analysis suggests that the landscape has no significant influence on the structuring of the studied population and shows little genetic differentiation

Genetic structure of Afghan Pika (Ochotona rufescens) populations based on D-loop region of the mitochondrial genome in Northern Khorasan Province

This study was carried out for genetic diversity of Afghan Pika (Ochotona rufescens) among four different populations in Northern Khorasan Province using D-Loop region of mitochondrial gene. The sixteen specimens were trapped from four different sanctuaries (Ghorkhod, Golol-Sarani, Salouk and Sarigol) and transferred to Laboratory. The intra and inter population genetic factors (haplotype and nucleotide diversity, haplotype differentiation among populations, Fst, Nm, gamma distribution parameter, mismatch distribution, Tajima'D neutrality test and Isolation by distance) were estimated and the results were compared among the populations. Finally, data set with 483 bp was used for each individual. The results showed 25 polymorphic, 457 conserved sites and 10 different haplotypes. The low value of Fst (Fst=0.21, P0.5) and Tajima 'D test (0.37, P>0.1) showed no population expansion and relatively stable population sizes

Anthropogenic and natural fragmentations shape the spatial distribution and genetic diversity of roe deer in the marginal area of its geographic range

Habitat destruction and fragmentation are major factors in the destruction of genetic diversity and affect the movement behavior of the Roe deer population in the remaining habitats. Here, we study the population and landscape genetics of Capreolus capreolus (roe deer) in northern and northwestern Iran using twelve polymorphism microsatellite markers. From 111 total specimens, 63 had successful extraction (6 feces, 35 tissues, 9 bones, and 13 antlers). We considered 30 microsatellite polymorphic loci, of which only 12 were amplified for our further analysis. For genetic diversity analysis, the Weir-Cockerham method was applied to measure the inbreeding coefficient (FIS) and fixation index (FST) for each locus as well as for each population. For landscape genetics, the susceptibility patterns of genetic variations were assessed using three hypotheses including isolation by distance (IBD), isolation by environment (IBE), isolation by resistance (IBR), and individual landscape genetic analysis. A habitat suitability map as an indicator of landscape resistance was constructed from several species distribution models (SDMs) algorithms including Generalized Boosting Models (GBM), Maximum Entropy (Maxent), Random Forest (RF), Generalized Linear Model (GLM), Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines (MARS) and artificial neural networks (ANN) and an ensemble model. Our estimated FIs index showed that the Golestan, Arasbaran, and Guilan populations had the highest and lowest genetic diversity among roe deer populations. According to the Fst criterion, our results showed that Golestan and East Azarbaijan (Arasbaran) had the highest and Mazandaran had the lowest genetic distance patterns. Our results do not suggest that there is high genetic differentiation for roe deer in the region, with high levels of gene flow between study areas. We found that geographic distance has no significant relationship with genetic distance and that there is no significant relationship between the ecological niche non-similarity matrix and the genetic distance matrix. The most influential factors affecting gene flow in roe deer were aspect and elevation variables. The analysis suggests that the landscape has no significant influence on the structuring of the studied population and shows little genetic differentiation