Abstract
The paper presents the results of predictions of the habitat persistence for rare relict of the Pleistocene floristic complex Patrinia sibirica (L.) Juss. in the Southern Urals under various forecasted climate change scenarios. Climate variables from CHELSA BIOCLIM, elevation data (GMTED2010) and coarse fragment content in the top level of soil were used as predictors for modeling in the MaxEnt software. The impact of climate change on P. sibirica habitats under the RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios calculated from an ensemble of four general circulation models has been analyzed. The modeling has shown that the changes in the habitat suitability depend on the altitude. Deterioration of the habitats could be attributed to a temperature increase in mountain forest locations, and to a precipitation of driest quarter increase in mountain forest-steppe locations. In both cases, this leads to the expansion of forest and shrub vegetation. Monitoring of the habitat persistence of P. sibirica and other relict species of the Pleistocene floristic complex can play a major role in predictions, as their massive decline would constitute that climatic changes exceed the ranges of their fluctuations in the Holocene.
Highlights
Environmental modeling is increasingly used for environmental policy formulation and making decisions on rare species protection measures including those under climate change[1,2,3]
P. sibirica is found in the most elevated parts of the Southern Urals where the climate is quite cold and humid. It belongs to the group of species with two optimum growth locations: one is in the mountain forest-steppe areas and another one is in the subalpine region (Fig. 1)
The resulting model of the current potential distribution area of P. sibirica in the Southern Urals has a mean AUC of 0.989, which corresponds to high quality of the model
Summary
Environmental modeling is increasingly used for environmental policy formulation and making decisions on rare species protection measures including those under climate change[1,2,3]. The need for modeling of climate change impact on plant habitats is evident for predictions of the stability of potentially most vulnerable rare species, including relicts of the Pleistocene floristic complex in the Southern Urals (Russia). One of these species is Patrinia sibirica (L.) Juss. P. sibirica is found in the most elevated parts of the Southern Urals where the climate is quite cold and humid It belongs to the group of species with two optimum growth locations: one is in the mountain forest-steppe areas and another one is in the subalpine region (Fig. 1). Their adaptation to drought could be explained because rocky habitats often have remarkable edaphic heterogeneity, including small-scale variabilities in soil m oisture[12,13] and temperature[14]
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