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Climate change threats to protected plants of China: an evaluation based on species distribution modeling

  • Article
  • Ecology
  • Published:
Chinese Science Bulletin

Abstract

Climate change poses major new challenges to biodiversity conservation. Distribution ranges of species have been proven to be affected by climate anomalies. Detecting the extent of protected species response to climate change can help formulate flexible conservation strategies to overcome the changing climate. Using species distribution modeling and high resolution climate data, we simulated current distribution patterns of 233 protected plants in China. Those patterns were then projected into future suitable habitats for each species under nine climate change scenarios, with no migration or full migration hypotheses. Under the most extreme climate change scenario (CGCM-B2a), we evaluated species extinction risks. Sixteen percent of protected plants are expected to lose more than 30 % of their current ranges. By calculating areal shifts, hotspots for emigrants, immigrants, and persistent species were identified under climate change. Flexible conservation strategies were addressed for those regions. Those strategies strongly depend on the migration types of species and sensitivity of the hotspots to changing climate. In hotspots for emigrants, the main conservation strategy is ex situ protection; protected species from these regions should be stored in seed banks or botanical gardens. For hotspots of immigrants, enough space should be maintained for new species, and some measures are necessary to assist dispersal. For hotspots of persistent species, more natural reserves are needed. We highlight related fields that can help conserve protected species in the future, such as conserving the soil seed bank and understanding of the effects of migration ability and interactions between protected species.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31100392) and the National Science and Technology Support Program (2012BAC01B05).

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Environmental and Resource Sciences, Shanxi University, Taiyuan, 030006, China

    Yinbo Zhang

  2. Institute of Loess Plateau, Shanxi University, Taiyuan, 030006, China

    Yinbo Zhang, Yuzhuo Wang & Minggang Zhang

  3. State Key Laboratory of Vegetation and Environmental Change, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100093, China

    Minggang Zhang & Keping Ma

Authors
  1. Yinbo Zhang
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  2. Yuzhuo Wang
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  3. Minggang Zhang
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  4. Keping Ma
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Minggang Zhang.

Additional information

SPECIAL TOPIC: Impacts of Climate Change on Biodiversity

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Zhang, Y., Wang, Y., Zhang, M. et al. Climate change threats to protected plants of China: an evaluation based on species distribution modeling. Chin. Sci. Bull. 59, 4652–4659 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11434-014-0642-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11434-014-0642-6

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