Abstract
Chinese sea buckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides subsp. sinensis) has considerable economic potential and plays an important role in reclamation and soil and water conservation. For scientific cultivation of this species across China, we identified the key climatic factors and explored climatically suitable habitat in order to maximize survival of Chinese sea buckthorn using MaxEnt and GIS tools, based on 98 occurrence records from herbarium and publications and 13 climatic factors from Bioclim, Holdridge life zone and Kria' index variables. Our simulation showed that the MaxEnt model performance was significantly better than random, with an average test AUC value of 0.93 with 10-fold cross validation. A jackknife test and the regularized gain change, which were applied to the training algorithm, showed that precipitation of the driest month (PDM), annual precipitation (AP), coldness index (CI) and annual range of temperature (ART) were the most influential climatic factors in limiting the distribution of Chinese sea buckthorn, which explained 70.1% of the variation. The predicted map showed that the core of climatically suitable habitat was distributed from the southwest to northwest of Gansu, Ningxia, Shaanxi and Shanxi provinces, where the most influential climate variables were PDM of 1.0–7.0 mm, AP of 344.0–1089.0 mm, CI of -47.7–0.0°C, and ART of 26.1–45.0°C. We conclude that the distribution patterns of Chinese sea buckthorn are related to the northwest winter monsoon, the southwest summer monsoon and the southeast summer monsoon systems in China.
Highlights
IntroductionSinensis) is a subspecies that belongs to the family Elaeagnaceae [1,2], and is commonly called acid vinegar salix or black thorn
We found that the climatic thresholds of the core area of Chinese sea buckthorn are 1.0–7.0 mm for precipitation of the driest month (PDM), 344.0–1089.0 mm for annual precipitation (AP), -47.7–0.0°C for coldness index (CI), and 26.1–45.0°C for annual range of temperature (ART), which were estimated based on the map of the climatically suitable habitats (Fig 2)
We can calculate the fitness of Chinese sea buckthorn under any given climatic conditions by using the climatic thresholds reported in Table 2 and the response curves shown in Fig 5 or S1 Fig. We could use local weather station data to indicate when this species could be planted and cultivated
Summary
Sinensis) is a subspecies that belongs to the family Elaeagnaceae [1,2], and is commonly called acid vinegar salix or black thorn. It has the largest distribution and planting area of all species belonged to the same genus, and it is the most important economic and ecological shrub species. The ecological effects of Chinese sea buckthorn have been well documented. PLOS ONE | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0131659 July 15, 2015
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