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Assessing the vulnerability of Oak (Quercus) forest ecosystems under projected climate and land use land cover changes in Western Himalaya

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Abstract

The current study focuses on the impacts of projected climate change scenarios and land change dynamics on the suitable habitat of some dominant Oak species (Quercus leucotrichophora, Quercus semecarpifolia, and Quercus floribunda) in western Himalaya. Two IPCC AR5 climate change scenarios viz. RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 from a suite of Global Climate Models best suited for Himalaya were used to model the changes in the suitable bioclimatic envelop of these Oak species in the western Himalayas for their probability current distributions and potential future distributions (2070) with the help of ensemble modelling in R platform. The formations of projected distribution areas for these species under climate change exhibits a north-eastward shift and a significant decrease in their climatic niche under projected climate change across both RCP’s, with RCP 4.5 showing increased loss of climatic niche (fundamental niche) of Oak species compared to RCP 8.5. The study also captures the footprints of current and projected land use land cover dynamics on the current and future distribution ranges of each Oak species in Western Himalaya which is observed to adversely affect the Oak forests by further reducing the extent of their realised niche.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Chairman ISRO for his encouragement and support. The authors are also thankful to Director, IIRS for his guidance. This work is a part of Department of Space, Govt. of India funded project and financial support for the same is acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Space, Indian Institute of Remote Sensing, Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), 4, Kalidas Road, Dehradun, 248001, India

    Pooja Rathore, Arijit Roy & Harish Karnatak

Authors
  1. Pooja Rathore
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  2. Arijit Roy
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  3. Harish Karnatak
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Arijit Roy.

Additional information

Communicated by M. D. Behera, S. K. Behera and S. Sharma.

Appendices

Appendix 1: Satellite data/source used to prepare decadal LULC maps

S. no

LULC map

Source

1.

1975

Landsat Multispectral Scanner System (MSS)

2.

1985

Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM)

3.

1995

Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM)

4.

2005

IRS Advanced Wide Field Sensor (AWiFS)

5.

2015

IRS Advanced Wide Field Sensor (AWiFS)

Appendix 2

figure a

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Rathore, P., Roy, A. & Karnatak, H. Assessing the vulnerability of Oak (Quercus) forest ecosystems under projected climate and land use land cover changes in Western Himalaya. Biodivers Conserv 28, 2275–2294 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-018-1679-7

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