Climatic, land use, human population, and three categories of endemic plants relate drought and biodiversity: An application for ecological management

Abstract

This study uses data from the country of Italy where drought is intensifying under climate change within the arid Mediterranean climate regime. Endemic plants are adapted to the Mediterranean climate in Italy and are considered in this study as markers of “ecological drought”. Endemic, endemic regionally exclusive, and total vascular plant species categories are investigated with eleven environmental variables consisting of climate, land use type, and human population. Using correlation analysis the present research analyzes associations between the three plant categories and eleven environmental variables including precipitation, temperature, soil anomaly, fAPAR, human population, and land use types. Though precipitation receives the greatest amount of attention when explaining drought, the findings of this work show that precipitation was not statistically associated with the three plant categories when considered as part of the ecological process of drought. Precipitation ranged from 551.09 to 1324.32 ​mm in 2005 and in 2018 from 579.36 to 1427.75 ​mm across the territory with some years and some regions substantially drier than others. Land conversion in square kilometers for agricultural to urbanized use changed from 259.43 to 17,423.99 ag2005 to 146.08–15,105.12 ag2018 and 45.18–2658.80 urb2005 to 158.53–5889.66 urb2018 over the study period. Results suggest ecological drought is determined through a combination of variables and the relationships between those conditions, not singly through changes in precipitation, temperature, or generalized vegetation cover. Results further suggest that land use change should be more seriously considered as a main contributor of drought conditions and as a factor of coupled biodiversity loss.