Fereshteh Babaei; Ataollah Ebrahimi; Ali Asghar Naghipour; Maryam Haidarian
Abstract
Climate change is one of the main determinants of plant species redistribution and biodiversity loss. This study aims to predict the impacts of climate change on the geographic distribution of Agropyron intermedium in Chaharmahal-va-Bakhtiari province as a part of Central Zagros, Iran. The presence points ...
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Climate change is one of the main determinants of plant species redistribution and biodiversity loss. This study aims to predict the impacts of climate change on the geographic distribution of Agropyron intermedium in Chaharmahal-va-Bakhtiari province as a part of Central Zagros, Iran. The presence points of studied species were recorded from our field surveys in the studied area. In this study, we used the ensemble predictions based on five species distribution models. The future projections were made for the year 2070 with three scenarios SSP126, SSP370, and SSP585, and two general circulation models GFDL-ESM4 and MRI-ESM2-0. According to the results, Random forest model and the generalized boosted model were recognized as the most reliable models for predicting species distribution. The most effective variables in the suitability of the A. intermedium species habitat were, respectively, elevation, Precipitation of wettest month, and slope. According to the finding, about 21.26% of the study area for A. intermedium species have had suitable habitats. The decline of suitable habitats of A. intermedium will be 36.06% to 63.20% under the GFDL-ESM4 general circulation model and 36.69% to 65.17% under MRI- ESM2 general circulation model due to climate change. The results also indicated that climate change will alter the range size of studied species and will probably shift to higher elevations in the future. The results of this study can be used to protect the habitat of the range plant species, as well as its rehabilitation and restoration.
Samaneh Sadat Mahzooni Kachapi; Pejman Tahmasebi; Ataollah Ebrahimi; Mohammad hasan Jouri; Mohsen Faal; Reza Omidipour
Abstract
Ecological processes at different scales led to heterogeneity in the landscape by changing the pattern of the landscape structure. These would result in fragmentation and disintegration of landscape structures and filtering biodiversity characteristics such as species functional diversity. We performed ...
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Ecological processes at different scales led to heterogeneity in the landscape by changing the pattern of the landscape structure. These would result in fragmentation and disintegration of landscape structures and filtering biodiversity characteristics such as species functional diversity. We performed this study to quantify the patches and classes characteristics of the landscape (metrics) and their impact on indicators of species and functional diversity. Sampling was performed in a semi-steppe rangelands of Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari, where the natural structure of the landscape creates various patches such that classified in seven different classes of plant communities. In each class, different patches were randomly selected and within them 5 to 10 macroplots of 30 * 30 m were randomly-systematically established. Afterwards, 3 plots of 2 * 2 m2 installed in macroplots in order to sample canopy cover and number of species. Taxonomic, functional diversity and functional beta diversity indices were measured using "Vegan", "FD" and "betapart" statistical packages in R software, respectively. The landscape metrics were also measured using Fragstats software. Finally, the relationships between diversity indices and landscape metrics were analyzed using linear regression. The results at the patch level showed a significant negative relationship between the shape and functional diversity indices such as leaf nitrogen weight average and leaf specific surface area weight average. The results at the class level indicate the positive effect of the functional evenness index on the edge density metric as well as the functional beta diversity of the patch richness metric.
