Predicting the Areas of Suitable Distribution for Zelkova serrata in China under Climate Change

Chunyan Cao,Jun Tao

doi:10.3390/su13031493

Chunyan Cao, Jun Tao

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/su13031493

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Abstract

Predicting the geographic distribution of a species together with its response to climate change is of great significance for biodiversity conservation and ecosystem sustainable development. Zelkova serrata is an excellent shelterbelt tree species that is used for soil and water conservation due to the fact of its well-developed root system, strong soil fixation, and wind resistance. However, the wild germplasm resources of Z. serrata have been increasingly depleted due to the fact of its weak ability to regenerate naturally and the unprecedented damage humans have caused to the natural habitats. The present work using Maxent aimed to model the current potential distribution of this species as well as in the future, assess how various environmental factors affect species distribution, and identify the shifts in the distribution of this species in various climate change scenarios. Our findings show habitat in provinces in the southern Qinling and Huai river basins have high environmental suitability. Temperature seasonality, annual precipitation, annual mean temperature, and warmest quarter precipitation were the most important factors affecting its distribution. Under a climate change scenario, the appropriate habitat range showed northeastward expansion geographically. The results in the present work can lay the foundation for the cultivation and conservation of Z. serrata.

Highlights

Climate has been suggested to be the major factor that affects the distribution of many species at a large scale [1,2]
We predicted that the currently highly appropriate habitats for Z. serrata were in southern Jiangsu, southern Anhui, Shanghai, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, southern Shaanxi, northern Guizhou, Hunan, southern Hubei, Chongqing, eastern Fujian, eastern central
The ROC curve predicting the distribution of Zelkova serrata based on the Maxent algorithm

Summary

Introduction

Climate has been suggested to be the major factor that affects the distribution of many species at a large scale [1,2]. Global climate changes have led to distribution shifts of numerous species, which may become a direct leading cause of the extinction of many species in the near future; alternatively, it may act synergistically with other extinction drivers [2,3,4,5]. These climate effects are generally referred to as alterations in climate that affect the distribution [5,6], structure, and composition of species [7,8] in the forests.

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