The hazard and unsureness of reducing habitat ranges in response to climate warming for 91 amphibian species in China

Abstract

Quantifying the unsureness and recognize the hazard of habitats loss from changing climate conditions is important for adaptation of biodiversity to climate warming. The unsureness and hazard of losing habitat ranges for 91 amphibian species in China in response to climate warming were examined by applying climate scenarios of representative concentration pathways and categorization methods of the fuzzy set as well as the Monte Carlo techniques. For non-random scenarios of shifting climate conditions, the abundance of amphibians enhanced in certain sites in northeastern, western China, and declined in certain sites in southeastern, central, eastern, and northern China. For non-stochastic scenarios of changing climate factors, approximately 18–29 species narrowed not more than 20% or 20–40% of their present habitat ranges, and about 74–83 amphibian species occupied over 80% of their overall habitat ranges. Under stochastic scenarios of shifting climatic conditions, the count of species that dwindled different levels of the present or overall habitat ranges declined with improving the possibility; with the likeliness of over 0.6, the number of species that shrunk not more than 20%, 20–40%, 40–60%, 60–80%, and over 80% of the modern habitat areas was roughly 5-11, 4-8, 0-2, 1-3 and 16-24, respectively; the number of species that inhabited not more than 20%, 20–40%, 40–60%, 60–80%, and more than 80% of the overall habitat areas was more or less 1-2, 1-5, 1-6, 0-3 and 25-30, respectively. Approximately 37 amphibian species would be in danger of extinction in accordance with the shrinking habitat ranges due to altering climate conditions, and the measures would be necessary to assist these species to adapt to climate warming.