Protection impact assessment at two scales in the Bozin and Marakhil protected area, Iran

Background/Question/Methods

Official protection can play a major role in biodiversity conservation, but it may have unintended effects on habitats at multiple scales. The Bozin and Marakhil Forest in Iran was established in 1999 to protect habitat for Eurasian roe deer (Capreolus capreolus), a species in decline throughout the Middle East. Using remote sensing data from 2001 and 2009, we evaluated the effects of this protection designation on forest area and structure at two spatial scales, using landscape structure metrics and patch size distribution models. We classified Landsat-5 TM images from the two dates, covering protected and unprotected areas and used for broad scale analysis. We used an IKONOS and GeoEye images from 2001 and 2009 for fine scale analysis.

Results/Conclusions

At the fine scale, significant habitat loss and fragmentation occurred in both protected and unprotected areas. A positive difference due to protection at this scale was increased habitat complexity inside the protected area. At the broad scale, habitat availability, contiguity, and complexity were maintained in the protected area, mainly through an increase in the number of large patches (as indicated by a shift from a power law with exponential cut-off to a power law distribution of patch sizes inside the park). The broad scale habitat structural maintenance and aggregation inside the park, and fragmentation outside the park boundaries over those eight years, signal a potential shift of human pressure from inside to directly outside of the park. This study indicates the need for spatial analyses on both inside and outside protection boundaries at multiple scales to find the protection impacts on the focal species habitat amount and structure.