The impact of climate change on habitat of a vulnerable European Otter (Lutra lutra) in Iran

Abstract

Abstract Climate change's effect on plants and animal species is one of the significant concerns of conservation biologists. These changes cause an increase in extinction and changes in the distribution and abundance of species. This research examined the impact of climate change on the habitat of the European Otter (Lutra lutra) in Khuzestan based on habitat modeling in R with climate scenarios and general circulation model MRI-ESM2-0. For this purpose, more than 40 presence points were recorded and 10 climatic and environmental variables were used as input for species distribution models including the Generalized Linear Model (GLM), Generalized Boosting Method (GBM), random forest (RF), and Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines (MARS). The value of AUC and TSS and the Kappa coefficient indicate the high accuracy and precision of the model. The RF and GBM are the best methods to determine the habitat of the European Otter in Khuzestan. The variables of distance from the river, Annual Mean Temperature (Bio), and Isothermality index had the greatest role in habitat suitability. The 185.9176 Km2 (14.3%) of Khuzestan was identified as a suitable habitat for this species. The prediction of changes in the geographical distribution of the species under the climate scenarios of ssp126, ssp370, and ssp585 showed that the habitat of this species would decrease by 10.37, 10.38 and 11.58%, respectively. According to the results of climate change, it has a significant impact on the distribution range of the species.