Revista de ecosistemas y ecografía

Abstracto

Geographic Information Systems and Multi Criteria Decision Analysis Based Habitat Suitability Analysis for Ethiopian Wolf (Canis simensis) Species at Bale Mountains National Park, Ethiopia

Tekalign Ketema, Mersha Alemu, Gebre Gidey

Wildlife management is a crucial issue to maintain sustainability of an ecosystem whereas habitat suitability analysis is very important for better conservation and management of endangered species like Ethiopian wolves. So that, the effort of this study was to analyze habitat suitability for Ethiopian wolf (Canis simensis) species through employing Geographic Information Systems and Multi Criteria Decision Analysis at Bale Mountains National Park, Ethiopia. The study employed nine datasets include: land use/land cover, soil, elevation, slope, temperature, rainfall, settlements, roads and rivers. In this study, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and weight overlay analysis methods were applied using IDRISI 17 and ArcGIS 10.5 software. Each datasets was integrated using Geographic Information Systems and Analytic Hierarchy process to rate the individual classes of each factor and weight the influence of one factor against to the other, to determine the weighted contribution of importance to the habitat suitability. As result the consistency ratio was 0.05% and found with acceptable limits. Then, the weighted overlay tool was applied to calculate the final habitat suitability map of Ethiopian wolf species based on the influence value. The result indicates, from the total of the study area 65.7% was suitable and 34.3% was not suitable for Ethiopian wolf’s habitat. Therefore, according to the results of the finding more areas of Bale Mountains National Park are suitable for Ethiopian wolf species based on the factors employed in the study. So that, this indicates the area is important for conservation from habitat loss and fragmentation.