PhD Defence Andhika Ariyanto | Spatially explicit conservation of the Javan leopard in human-dominated landscapes

Spatially explicit conservation of the Javan leopard in human-dominated landscapes

Andhika Ariyanto is a PhD student in the Department of LIFE. (Co)Promotors are prof.dr. A.K. Skidmore from the Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC) and prof.dr. T. Wang from the Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC) and School of Geospatial Engineering and Science, Sun Yat-sen University.

As apex predators, large carnivores play important ecological roles. They reduce herbivore pressure, limit mesopredator release, and support scavenger communities, with downstream consequences for vegetation structure and nutrient flows through consumptive and risk-mediated effects. Conserving such species in human-dominated landscapes is challenging because wide-ranging carnivores must persist across heterogeneous land-use mosaics with elevated human access and disturbance. These challenges are evident on Java, where the Javan leopard (Panthera pardus melas) occupies fragmented forest remnants and faces threats that include habitat loss and fragmentation, depletion of wild prey, persecution, and expanding infrastructure.

This thesis adopts a species-to-landscape framework with the Javan leopard as the focal species and is organized into four linked studies. It begins by using camera-trap data to quantify spatiotemporal overlap between leopards and potential prey, proceeds to model the distributions of candidate prey, and relates prey diversity to leopard occurrence. Next, it develops a leopard distribution model that explicitly incorporates prey as a predictor, and finally translates these outputs into scenario-based structural connectivity models that contrast road development with reforestation to diagnose linkages among habitat patches. Taken together, this work emphasizes conservation beyond park boundaries and supports the design of multifunctional landscapes that may enable long-term coexistence between people and large carnivores on one of the world’s most densely populated islands within a sustainable development framework.