Climate change impacts on potential distribution of multipurpose agro-forestry species: Argania spinosa (L.) Skeels as case study

Abstract

Climate change is one of the extreme factors that threatens biodiversity and affects all organisms and their habitat. Agro-silvopastoral systems with known economic value experience dual pressure due to overexploitation and loss of habitat from rapid climate change effects. Both threats are serious if not managed properly. One strategy for long-term conservation of valuable species and their habitat under changing climate is to identify locations that may sustain suitable habitat conditions for those species. For the argan tree (endemic of Morocco) evaluated in this study, we successfully modeled the habitat suitability of this species for the current and future climate change scenarios (2050 and 2070) by using the Maximum Entropy approach. Predicted future ranges of suitable habitat show that they are site-specific and seem to be highly dependent on climate. The habitat suitability will reduce under each of the future climate scenario (more than 32% of current suitable area will be unsuitable in the future), which tend to have negative consequences for argan ecosystem conservation and provision of functions and services. Given this, predictive maps of suitable habitat elaborated in this study present a powerful tool to include future climate variability in the existing and future restoration and conservation strategies of this valuable agroforestry system.