Climate change may threaten habitat suitability of threatened plant species within Chinese nature reserves
Autor: | Chun-Jing Wang, Zhi-Xiang Zhang, Chengzhu Liu, Ji-Zhong Wan |
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Rok vydání: | 2016 |
Předmět: |
0106 biological sciences
China Conservation Biology lcsh:Medicine Climate change Plant Science 010603 evolutionary biology 01 natural sciences General Biochemistry Genetics and Molecular Biology Nature reserve Ecology 010604 marine biology & hydrobiology General Neuroscience lcsh:R Biodiversity General Medicine Future climate Conservation areas Habitat suitability Geography Biogeography Schoener's D Habitat Greenhouse gas Suitable habitat Threatened species Maxent modelling Plant species General Agricultural and Biological Sciences Threatened plant species |
Zdroj: | PeerJ, Vol 4, p e2091 (2016) PeerJ |
ISSN: | 2167-8359 |
DOI: | 10.7717/peerj.2091 |
Popis: | Climate change has the potential to alter the distributions of threatened plant species, and may therefore diminish the capacity of nature reserves to protect threatened plant species. Chinese nature reserves contain a rich diversity of plant species that are at risk of becoming more threatened by climate change. Hence, it is urgent to identify the extent to which future climate change may compromise the suitability of threatened plant species habitats within Chinese nature reserves. Here, we modelled the climate suitability of 82 threatened plant species within 168 nature reserves across climate change scenarios. We used Maxent modelling based on species occurrence localities and evaluated climate change impacts using the magnitude of change in climate suitability and the degree of overlap between current and future climatically suitable habitats. There was a significant relationship between overlap with current and future climate suitability of all threatened plant species habitats and the magnitude of changes in climate suitability. Our projections estimate that the climate suitability of more than 60 threatened plant species will decrease and that climate change threatens the habitat suitability of plant species in more than 130 nature reserves under the low, medium, and high greenhouse gas concentration scenarios by both 2050s and 2080s. Furthermore, future climate change may substantially threaten tree plant species through changes in annual mean temperature. These results indicate that climate change may threaten plant species that occur within Chinese nature reserves. Therefore, we suggest that climate change projections should be integrated into the conservation and management of threatened plant species within nature reserves. |
Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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