The future of plant diversity within a Mediterranean endemism centre: Modelling the synergistic effects of climate and land-use change in Peloponnese, Greece.

Autor: Braz Pires M; Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University, Princetonlaan 8a, 3584 CB Utrecht, the Netherlands. Electronic address: m.braz.pires@cml.leidenuniv.nl., Kougioumoutzis K; Laboratory of Botany, Department of Biology, University of Patras, 26504 Patras, Greece. Electronic address: kkougiou@aua.gr., Norder S; Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University, Princetonlaan 8a, 3584 CB Utrecht, the Netherlands. Electronic address: s.j.norder@uu.nl., Dimopoulos P; Laboratory of Botany, Department of Biology, University of Patras, 26504 Patras, Greece. Electronic address: pdimopoulos@upatras.gr., Strid A; Bakkerej 6, DK-5853 Ørbæk, Denmark. Electronic address: arne.strid@youmail.dk., Panitsa M; Laboratory of Botany, Department of Biology, University of Patras, 26504 Patras, Greece. Electronic address: mpanitsa@upatras.gr.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: The Science of the total environment [Sci Total Environ] 2024 Oct 15; Vol. 947, pp. 174622. Date of Electronic Publication: 2024 Jul 09.
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.174622
Abstrakt: Climate- and land-use change stand as primary threats to terrestrial biodiversity. Yet, their synergistic impacts on species distributions remain poorly understood. To address this knowledge gap, we conducted the first-ever comprehensive species distribution analysis on an entire regional endemism centre within an eastern Mediterranean country, incorporating dynamic land-use/land-cover change data together with climate change scenarios. Specifically, we apply species distribution modelling and spatial data analysis techniques to compare the individual and synergistic effects of these environmental drivers on the endemic vascular flora of Peloponnese, focusing on potential range contractions, altitudinal shifts, and habitat fragmentation levels. Moreover, we identify fine-scale present and potential future endemism hotspots within our study area, incorporating taxonomic and phylogenetic information. Overall, we aim to enhance our current understanding of endemism patterns and contribute to the development of future-proof conservation strategies for safeguarding Greece's endangered endemic flora. The integration of land-use change projections with climate change yielded less severe impacts compared to the effects anticipated when considering climatic variables alone. Most taxa are expected to undergo significant range declines and nearly half might experience increased habitat fragmentation, due to the synergistic effects of climate- and land-use change. We identified endemism hotspots, which are concentrated in or along the main Peloponnesian mountain massifs. However, our predictions indicate that areas presently recognized as endemism hotspots will undergo a concerning area decline, across all future scenarios considered in this study. Our findings highlight the importance of including dynamic land-use variables alongside climatic predictors when projecting species distributions under global change. Moreover, we showed that endemism hotspots are not static and considering their potential geographic shifts is paramount to delineate effective forward-looking conservation strategies.
Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
(Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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