General Overview to the Research Programs in Part I

This part is consisted of 6 other chapters concerned with various research programs dedicated to the Persian leopard in Iran. The first chapter is an introduction to the historical and cultural significance of the species. Furthermore, conservation requirements of the leopard is also discussed. In the next chapter, natural and socioeconomic characteristics across the leopard range which is almost in all provinces of the country is considered for an innovative classification of the regions for further research and conservation programs. The result is used in the third chapter for a countrywide distribution modeling of the Persian leopard potential habitats on a regional basis. The findings of the third chapter provide a basis for the next research concerning ground validations of developed MAXENT potential distribution models. This chapter also provides an evaluation to three threshold rules according to the ground validation techniques. Findings elaborated in the previous chapters are used in the fifth manuscript to develop innovative species-specific models to assess cumulative effects of land use and land cover variations on the regional persistence of the leopard. In the last research chapter of this section, an overview is presented concerning the leopard potential habitats in East-Azarbaijan province and the transboundary habitats in the Iranian sector of the Caucasus Ecoregion. To be consistent and clear in all the chapters of the first part of this book, a general overview is presented here to provide definitions for the key terms and the relative ecological concepts.