Shifting ranges of eleven invasive alien plants in China in the face of climate change

Abstract

Identifying the factors predicting the suitable habitats of invasive alien plants (IAPs) and how these suitable habitats are affected by climate change are important for taking measures to limit the spread of IAPs in China. In this study, an ensemble forecasting approach is used to accurately evaluate the relationships between IAPs distribution and the environmental variables, and to simulate the range shifts of the eleven invasive species under different climate scenarios. All of the AUC and TSS values from ensemble forecasting models are above 0.9, indicating its perfect ability to distinguish actual suitable and unsuitable habitat. Our models show that annual mean temperature and temperature seasonality have strong correlations with alien weeds distribution. The results indicate that all the 11 IAPs ranges will expand northward, which may be due to global climate warming. The prediction shows that a more aggressive climate scenario will be more conducive to the northward expansion of IAPs. The results of this study can provide a new insight for policy makers to monitor and control IAPs.