Predicting the impact of climate change on the distribution of two threatened Himalayan medicinal plants of Liliaceae in Nepal

Journal of Mountain Science volume 14, pages558–570(2017)Cite this article

Abstract

Predicting the potential distribution of medicinal plants in response to climate change is essential for their conservation and management. Contributing to the management program, this study aimed to predict the distribution of two threatened medicinal plants, Fritillaria cirrhosa and Lilium nepalense. The location of focal species gathered from herbarium specimen housed in different herbaria and online databases were geo-referenced and checked for spatial autocorrelation. The predictive environmental variables were selected, and MaxEnt software was used to model the current and future distributions of focal species. Four Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) trajectories of the BCC-CSM1.1 model were used as the future (2050) projection layer. The MaxEnt modelling delineated the potential distribution of F. cirrhosa and L. nepalense. The current suitability is projected towards Central and Eastern Hilly/Mountainous regions. Both species gain maximum suitability in RCP 4.5 which decline towards other trajectories for L. nepalense. Overall, both the focal species shift towards the north-west, losing their potential habitat in hilly and lower mountainous regions by 2050 across all trajectories. Our results highlight the impact of future climate change on two threatened and valuable species. The results can be further useful to initiate farming of these medicinally and economically important species based on climatically suitable zone and for designing a germplasm conservation strategy.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge Cornell Nepal Study Program for the partial financial supports to carry out field work. Thanks goes to Alexander Robert O’Neill for English correction in our manuscripts. We are indebted to all the faculty members of Central Department of Botany, TU, Nepal as well as KATH and TUCH for facilitating herbarium specimens. Sailesh RANJITKAR is supported from the CGIAR research programs on ‘Forests, Trees and Agroforestry’ (CRP6.2) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31270524).

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Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory for Plant Diversity and Biogeography of East Asia, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, 650201, China

    Santosh Kumar Rana & Sailesh Ranjitkar

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Santosh Kumar Rana

  3. Central Department of Botany, Tribhuvan University, Kirtipur, Kathmandu, Nepal

    Santosh Kumar Rana, Hum Kala Rana, Suresh Kumar Ghimire & Krishna Kumar Shrestha

  4. World Agroforestry Centre East and Central Asia, 132 Lanhei Rd, Heilongtan, Kunming, 650201, China

    Sailesh Ranjitkar

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  1. Santosh Kumar Rana
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  2. Hum Kala Rana
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  3. Suresh Kumar Ghimire
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  4. Krishna Kumar Shrestha
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  5. Sailesh Ranjitkar
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Correspondence to Santosh Kumar Rana or Sailesh Ranjitkar.

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Electronic Supplementary Materials: Supplementary materials (Appendixes 1-4) are available in the online version of this article at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007-s11629-015-3822-1

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Rana, S.K., Rana, H.K., Ghimire, S.K. et al. Predicting the impact of climate change on the distribution of two threatened Himalayan medicinal plants of Liliaceae in Nepal. J. Mt. Sci. 14, 558–570 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11629-015-3822-1

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Keywords

  • Commercial exploitation
  • Conservation
  • Lily
  • Fritillaria cirrhosa
  • Lilium nepalense
  • MaxEnt modelling
  • Species distribution