Research overview: land-use and land-cover change modeling for cat habitat futures

Projecting future habitat for cats requires anticipating not just climate but human land-use change, which is modeled with scenario-based simulation tools. This overview surveys approaches that forecast deforestation, agricultural expansion, and urban growth under different policy and economic scenarios, and how these projections are coupled with species distribution models to estimate combined climate and land-use impacts. It reviews integrated frameworks and their uncertainties. The synthesis frames land-use modeling as essential for realistic felid futures, explaining why projecting only climate can understate threats to forest cats whose habitat is being cleared far faster than it is shifting with temperature, and why the most credible assessments combine both drivers.