Stand-alone GIS Application for Wildlife Distribution and Habitat Suitability (Case Study: Javan Gibbon, Gunung Salak, West Java)

Abstract

The synthesis of wildlife-habitat studies, multivariate habitat analysis, and wildlife mapping techniques is very promising to provide a basis for impact assessment and mitigation, conservation and monitoring of wildlife (Morrison et al., 1992). In contrast, case studies of the synthesis still have been rarely done in Indonesia. The need of it is obvious considering that Indonesia has a lot of protected areas. In this context, developing such GIS application which carrying the synthesis could be useful to support designing management plan in spatial basis. The case study in order to test the system performance is javan gibbon (Hylobates moloch) in Gunung Salak considering to its status as a critically endangered and keystone species for Gunung Halimun-Salak National Park. The GIS Application is developed by using iterative and incremental approach. The development has two phases, that is initial phase or requirement analysis and construction phase. In the initial phase, the intended system and its needed functionalities were determined, whereas in the construction phase the functionalities were further analyzed, designed, and finally implemented. The system was tested using the spatial data which represents habitat factor of javan gibbon and the performance of the system was examined. The concerned system, namely SUITSTAT, was succesfully built. It is equipped with data preparation and habitat suitability model functionalities. Including in data preparation is basic geoprocessing, ecogeographical variable generation, and species distribution mapping. The habitat suitability model follows decision rules based method, specifically Simple Additive Weighting, which comprises of weight calculation based on presence data, standardization, and score calculation. The suitability habitat information is available in spatial and chart format. Based on system assessment, most of processes were performed well. Some drawbacks are existed which addressed for future development, such as refinement of dissolve algorithm and data preparation functionalities. The suitability model was constructed by ten ecogeographical variables, which are the area of primary and secondary forest, the area that containing 0 – 15% slope, the area that containing 15-45% slope, the area that containing more than 45% slope, the area that containing lowland and submontane forest, the distance to river, road, and non-habitat area. These ecogeographical variables were extracted from landcover, elevation-based forest ecosystem, rivers and roads data, and slope data. The model outcome shows that Mt. Salak area consists of 13.20% (17.53 km2), 26.25% (34.86 km2), 19.40% (25.77 km2), 4.16% (5.53 km2), and 20.17% (26.78 km2) for high-suitable, suitable, moderate suitable, less and low suitable level subsequently, from total area of 13278.34 ha. It also consists of not suitable area for 12.69 km2 or 9.56% from the total area.