Land abandonment and changes in snow cover period accelerate range expansions of sika deer.

ABSTRACT: Ongoing climate change and land-use change have the potential to substantially alter the distribution of large herbivores. This may result in drastic changes in ecosystems by changing plant-herbivore interactions. Here, we developed a model explaining sika deer persistence and colonization between 25 years in terms of neighborhood occupancy and habitat suitability. We used climatic, land-use, and topographic variables to calculate the habitat suitability and evaluated the contributions of the variables to past range changes of sika deer. We used this model to predict the changes in the range of sika deer over the next 100 years under four scenario groups with the combination of land-use change and climate change. Our results showed that both climate change and land-use change had affected

SUBMITTER: Ohashi H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6093158 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature