Abstract
Human pressure on the environment and climate change are two important factors contributing to species decline and overall loss of biodiversity. Orchids may be particularly vulnerable to human-induced losses of habitat and the pervasive impact of global climate change. In this study, we simulated the extent of the suitable habitat of three species of the terrestrial orchid genus Cypripedium in northeast China and assessed the impact of human pressure and climate change on the future distribution of these species. Cypripedium represents a genus of long-lived terrestrial orchids that contains several species with great ornamental value. Severe habitat destruction and overcollection have led to major population declines in recent decades. Our results showed that at present the most suitable habitats of the three species can be found in Da Xing’an Ling, Xiao Xing’an Ling and in the Changbai Mountains. Human activity was predicted to have the largest impact on species distributions in the Changbai Mountains. In addition, climate change was predicted to lead to a shift in distribution towards higher elevations and to an increased fragmentation of suitable habitats of the three investigated Cypripedium species in the study area. These results will be valuable for decision makers to identify areas that are likely to maintain viable Cypripedium populations in the future and to develop conservation strategies to protect the remaining populations of these enigmatic orchid species.
Highlights
Predicting changes in species distributions as a result of human activity and/or climate change is crucial for the conservation and restoration of populations of endangered species [1]
The maximum entropy model (Maxent) has been shown to obtain more accurate prediction results compared with other models when the amount of data used for the prediction is small, making it a valuable tool for the prediction of the potential distribution ranges of endangered species or species of great economic value [4,5,6,7,8]
We investigated the impact of human activities on the environment and climate change on the distribution of three Cypripedium species in northeast China
Summary
Predicting changes in species distributions as a result of human activity and/or climate change is crucial for the conservation and restoration of populations of endangered species [1]. Species distribution models (SDMs) are effective methods for estimating the ecological requirements and potential distribution of species. These models combine individual species’ occurrence records with a set of environmental predictors to estimate the ecological requirements of the species [2,3]. Human activities in the environment and climate change are considered as two of the most severe threats to the conservation of wild plant and animal species [9,10,11]. Intense human activities can significantly alter the structure of ecosystems, change species distribution patterns and affect ecosystems functions, leading to a more homogenous biosphere [14,15,16,17]
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