Application of GIS and Remote Sensing in Mapping Wildlife Land Suitability for Mountain Nyala Species at Bale Mountains National Park, Ethiopia
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Date
2014-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The Bale Mountains are the largest remaining alpine habitats, whereby Bale Mountain National Park is found in the African continent. The Bale Mountain National Park was first proposed to help protect the diverse and abundant wildlife, particularly the Mountain Nyalas and Red Foxes that are endemic to the world wide. Even though proposals to set up this conservation area have been planned since 1973, the area proposed is very large and the available infrastructure is completely inadequate to manage it effectively and this led to extensive wildlife habitat fragmentations. Thus, the intension of this study is to assess the habitat suitability range of Mountain Nyala species in Bale Mountains National park so as to aid an effort for utilization and conservation as well as to provide a background information to guide park managers in making appropriate decision using GIS and remote sensing technologies. By implementing GIS spatial analyst techniques, the study was attempted to identify potential habitat for Mountain Nyala (one of wild life species) at BMNP. Eight datasets i.e. vegetation types, soil types, topographic factor (elevation and slope), climate factor (temperature), proximity factors (distance to settlement, road and river) have been employed to map out wildlife land suitability corridor for Mountain Nyala specie. The weights were calculated using IDRISI32 Multi-criteria Evaluation in weight module pair-wise comparison method. Then weighted factors maps were integrated using weighted overlay analysis to run the wildlife corridor suitability model. Finally wildlife corridor map for Nyala was produced. In general, the result of the land suitability analysis for selected species shown five classes of suitability; from the total land of the study area 137.5 km2 (% 5.96) was highly suitable, 395.6 km2 (% 17.14) was moderately suitable, 561.8 km2 (% 24.34) was marginally suitable, 501.6 km2 (% 21.73) was currently not suitable, and 711.5km2(% 30.83) was permanently not suitable areas. The suitability analysis shows that 1091.5km2(47.5%) of the study area is habitat suitable range for Mountain Nyala species where as 1213.1km2 (52.5%) of the study area are currently and permanently not suitable areas respectively.
Key Words: Land suitability analysis, Wildlife corridor, Mountain Nyala, GIS, RS, MCE, BMNP
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Keywords
Land Suitability Analysis, Wildlife Corridor, Mountain Nyala, GIS, RS MCE BMNP