Large scale land use/cover changes and habitat fragmentation have been associated with the decline of many wildlife populations in ecological sensitive regions. Because natural habitats are affected by various and shifting social and ecological variables, one of the challenges stems from the fact that sustainable management systems must relate and adjust to a complex and ever-changing environment. The concept of adaptive management addresses this desirable quality by monitoring and adjusting in accordance with what is known about the socio-ecological environment. The main goal of this study was to quantify the spatial pattern change in Arasbaran Biosphere Reserve, Northwest of Iran in two periods of 14 years (1987–2001) and 10 years (2001-2011), and to address the social network structures for developing an adaptive management strategy in Arasbaran biosphere reserve. Arasbaran is one of the most important protected areas in Iran, because Caucasian black grouse (Tetrao mlokosiewiczi) is only restricted to the Arasbaran Biosphere Reserve in Iran, and the population and range of this specialist bird species have been declining over the last decades. Up to now most of the studies have focused on local factors to explain Caucasian black grouse population trends. However, larger-scale landscape patterns changes, may have contributed to the declines. This study focuses on the landscape structure changes of black grouse habitat. We used Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) satellite image from 1987, 2011, and ETM+ from 2011, for analysis of the spatial pattern of the species distribution polygons. The satellite images were geometrically corrected, and Keywords: Arasbaran Biosphere Reserve, Land Use Change, Landscape Structure, Black Grouse, Social Network
