Study on Taiwania cryptomerioides under climate change: MaxEnt modeling for predicting the potential geographical distribution

Abstract

Changes in future climate will have an important impact on biodiversity. Taiwania cryptomerioides has important scientific value for the study of paleogeography, paleoclimate and paleobotany. Based on the environmental data and future scenarios provided by previous studies, the present and future suitable habitat for Taiwania cryptomerioides was modeled, and the significance of environmental factors that shape its distribution were evaluated in this study. Furthermore, a maximum entropy model (MaxEnt) and geographical information system (ArcGIS) were used to identify suitable regions under climate change scenarios in China. The 112 occurrence records and nine environmental factors were further analyzed in this work. Our results show that Taiwania cryptomerioides has a suitable habitat of 211.21 × 104 km2 across most of northeast China. Moreover, the altitude, annual mean temperature, precipitation of the driest month and precipitation of the wettest quarter were identified as the essential factors shaping habitat availability for Taiwania cryptomerioides. Furthermore, the area under the curve (AUC) of the train was 0.944, placing the model in the “excellent” category. As predicted by concentrations of four greenhouse gases from increasing emissions, ranges of species may decrease as global warming intensifies. Overall, the range shift to higher latitudes would gradually become significant. Our research offers suggestions for conservation both in theory and in application, as well as long-term management strategies for the species.