Abstract
As the interest on biodiversity has increased around the world, researches about evaluating potential for habitat are also increasing to find and comprehend the valuable habitats. This study focus on comprehending the significance of stream in evaluating habitat's potential. The purpose of this study is to evaluate habitat potential with applying stream as a main variable, and to comprehend the relationship between the variables and habitat potential. Basin is a unit that has hydrological properties and dynamic interaction with ecosystem. Especially, biodiversity and suitability of habitat in basin area has direct correlation with stream. Existing studies also are proposing for habitat potential evaluation in basin unit, they applied forest, slope and road as main variables. Despite stream is considered the most important factor in basin area, researchers haven't applied stream as a main variable. Therefore, in this study, three variables that can demonstrate hydrological properties are selected, which are, riparian distance, stream order and land use disturbance, and evaluate habitat potential. Habitat potential is analyzed by using Maxent (Maximum entropy model), and vertebrate's presence data is used as dependent variables and stream order map and land cover map is used as base data of independent variables. As a result of analysis, habitat potential is higher at riparian and upstream area, and lower at frequently disturbed area. Result indicates that adjacent to stream, upstream, and less disturbed area is the habitat that vertebrate prefer. In particular, mammals prefer adjacent area of stream and forest and reptiles prefer upriver area. Birds prefer adjacent area of stream and midstream and amphibians prefer adjacent area of stream and upriver. The result of this research could help to establish habitat conservation strategy around basin unit in the future.