Research overview: snow leopard distribution models across emissions scenarios

This survey reviews how snow leopard species distribution models are run across contrasting greenhouse-gas emissions pathways to bracket the range of plausible future habitat. It explains how downscaled climate projections, terrain ruggedness, and prey availability feed ensemble models, and how outputs differ between lower and higher emissions scenarios in the magnitude and speed of projected habitat loss. The overview discusses common pitfalls such as sampling bias in occurrence records, extrapolation into novel climates, and the difficulty of validating projections decades ahead. It helps readers interpret the wide spread of published numbers for projected snow leopard habitat loss and understand why scenario choice drives much of that variation.