Figure 1 Modeling process for building potential habitat for the red panda

Relative abundance and habitat association

Red pandas are elusive thus, it is hard to estimate their population size through direct sightings. So, the Encounter Rate (ER) of their signs was used as a standard method to measure their relative abundance (Ghose & Dutta 2010; Bista et al. 2017). We calculated the ER as number of red panda signs per km. Habitat associated variables including topographic and vegetation covariates were analyzed using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) in FactoMineR package (LĂȘ et al. 2008).