Central Tien Shan landscape covers the eastern tip of Kyrgyzstan. There is over 6,500 km2 of snow leopard habitat in the Central Tien Shan landscape, located almost predominantly in one structurally connected block.
This habitat connects to habitat in China to the south, and through that, to southern Kyrgyzstan.
Good Habitat
Fair Habitat
Key threats to snow leopards
Conservation strategies that involve people are key, since much of the core snow leopard habitat in this landscape is affected by some level of human impact.
34% of snow leopard habitat in the Central Tien Shan is protected, including the important habitats of Sarychat-Erchat Nature Reserve and Khan Tengri National Park.
Key unprotected areas are circled on the map. These include the areas between Sarychat-Ertash and Khan Tengi (currently a proposed wildlife corridor) as well as the border areas between Kyrgyzstan and China.
In this map, roads, population centers, and land cover are used as proxies for human impact on snow leopards. We assume that human pressure on snow leopards is higher when closer to these landscape features.
Perhaps the most critical locations for management attention include the corridor of settlements and infrastructure that runs north to south down the center of the landscape; as well as to the south of Sarychat-Ertash Nature Reserve.
This map combines different analyses to show the overall condition of the landscape.
Conservation importance
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Impacts
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Areas in dark blue are of high conservation importance and are threatened by high levels of climatic or human impacts. These areas should be targeted for conservation interventions.
Temperatures are expected to increase by 1.9-3.2 ºC by mid-century, with the greatest change expected in August, where temperatures could warm by 2.3-4.1 ºC. Warmer temperatures may extend the growing season and alter the length of the freeze-thaw cycle. Precipitation is projected to increase between November and May, but from June to October it could become either wetter or dryer. These climatic changes may increase the frequency of extreme events like heat waves, flooding, and drought that will affect snow leopard ecosystems and people.
* Columbia University Center for Climate Systems Research, Earth Institute. 2017. Climate Change in the Snow Leopard Landscapes of Asia's High Mountains
This map shows where rain falls and flows downstream throughout the year. The Central Tien Shan landscape acts as a belt between the northern Issyk Kull basin and the southern Aksu and Aksay river basins. Use the sliding bar below to compare rainfall from month to month.
The baseline freeze extent guides a landscape's freeze and thaw cycles, and any change to this will result in different patterns of snowfall and snowmelt, and other cryosphere interactions (e.g. glaciers, permafrost). In general, the decrease in freeze extent closely follows the baseline freeze frontier, and changes are within the range of a few hundred meters to a few kilometres. Yet for mountaintop snow cover and glaciers, such an impact might be dramatic (May to September).
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