Potential geographical distribution and environmental explanations of
rare and endangered plant species through combined modelling: A case
study of Northwest Yunnan, China
Abstract
In recent decades, due to the effect of climate change and the
interference of human activities, the species habitat index fallen 2%.
Studying the geographical distribution pattern and predicting the
potential geographical distribution of species are of great significance
for developing scientific and effective biodiversity conservation
strategies. The purpose of this research is to predict the potential
geographical distribution of 25 rare and endangered plant species in
Northwest Yunnan, China on the grid map with a resolution of 0.05° ×
0.05° and analyze the explanation capabilities of various environmental
factors on the potential geographical distribution patterns of these
species, and explore the main restrictive environmental factors.
Initially, we employed the ecological niche model MaxEnt to predict the
potential geographical distribution of target species. Following that,
we overlaid the potential geographical distribution of each species, and
we obtained the potential geographical distribution pattern of species
richness on the spatial scale of the ecological niche model with a
resolution of 0.05° × 0.05°. Ultimately, we also adopted geographically
weighted regression (GWR) model to investigate the explanation
capabilities of various environmental parameters on the potential
distribution patterns. The results showed that the average AUC value of
each species was between 0.80 and 1.00, which indicated that the
simulation precision of the MaxEnt model for each species was good or
excellent. Besides, the potential distribution areas of these species
were between 826.33 km2 and 44,963.53 km2. In addition, the average
contribution values of the annual precipitation (Bio12), precipitation
of coldest quarter (Bio19) and population density (Pop) were 25.92%,
15.86% and 17.95%, respectively. Moreover, the goodness of fit R2 and
AIC value of the water model were 0.88 and 7,703.82, respectively, which
indicated the water factor largely influenced the potential distribution
of these species. The results of this study would be helpful for
implementing long-term conservation and reintroduction for these
species.