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Separation of the bioclimatic spaces of Himalayan tree rhododendron species predicted by ensemble suitability models

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Title Separation of the bioclimatic spaces of Himalayan tree rhododendron species predicted by ensemble suitability models
 
Creator Ranjitkar S
Kindt, Roeland
Sujakhu NM
Hart R
Guo W
Yang X
Shrestha, Krishna K.
Xu, Jianchu
Luedeling, Eike
 
Subject climate change
agriculture
food security
economic distribution
biodiversity
 
Description The tree rhododendrons include the most widely distributed Himalayan Rhododendron species belonging to the subsection Arborea. Distributions of two members of this sub-species were modelled using bioclimatic data for current conditions (1950–2000). A subset of the least correlated bioclimatic variables was used for ecological niche modelling (ENM). We used an ENM ensemble method in the BiodiversityR R-package to map the suitable climatic space for tree rhododendrons based on 217 point location records. Ensemble bioclimatic models for tree rhododendrons had high predictive power with bioclimatic variables, which also separated the climatic spaces for the two species. Tree rhododendrons were found occurring in a wide range of climate and the distributional limits were associated with isothermality, temperature ranges, temperature of the wettest quarter, and precipitation of the warmest quarter of the year. The most suitable climatic space for tree rhododendrons was predicted to be in western Yunnan, China, with suitability declining towards the west and east. Its occurrence in a wide range of climatic settings with highly dissected habitats speaks to the adaptive capacity of the species, which might open up future options for their conservation planning in regions where they are listed as threatened.
 
Date 2014-08
2015-09-16T17:00:41Z
2015-09-16T17:00:41Z
 
Type Journal Article
 
Identifier Ranjitkar S, Kindt R, Sujakhu NM, Hart R, Guo W, Yang X, Shrestha KK, Xu J, Luedeling E. 2014. Separation of the bioclimatic spaces of Himalayan tree rhododendron species predicted by ensemble suitability models. Global Ecology and Conservation 1:2-12.
https://hdl.handle.net/10568/68202
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gecco.2014.07.001
 
Language en
 
Rights CC-BY-NC-ND-3.0
Open Access
 
Format p. 2-12
 
Publisher Elsevier BV
 
Source Global Ecology and Conservation