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 R 2 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.
Keywords: biodiversity conservation, environmental
explanations, geographically weighted regression (GWR), habitat
suitability, MaxEnt, Northwest Yunnan, potential geographical
distribution