Estimation of elephant home range in Endau-Rompin (Peta) National Park using geospatial approach

Abstract The tropical rainforest coverage is decreasing has caused wildlife habitat lost. Instead of that, the wildlife especially elephants have lack source of food. Due to that, the elephants tend to go to the areas near the forest and human settlements. This problem has contributed to the occurrences of human-elephant conflict. To overcome this problem, the estimation of elephant home range is crucial as one of the approaches in establishment of wildlife corridor. To estimate the elephant home range in Endau-Rompin National Park (Peta), the habitat suitability model was utilized. The factors that characterise the elephant home range has been identified based on weighted overlay analysis based on the literature review. The parameters involve are Digital Elevation Model (DEM) data, Normal Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), proximity to river, Land Surface Temperature (LST), Slope and land use and land cover (LULC). Buffer analysis is used to identify surrounding geographic features. Results shows that LULC was the highest weight (30 %) as influence on elephant habitat suitability. While proximity to river, slope and NDVI were weighted with 20%. The habitat suitability has shown the elephant home range of year 2018 to 2020 was increasing. As a conclusion, the weighted overlay can identify the factors that gives effects to elephant home range. However, lack of detailed information for each environmental variables on how the factors would affects.