Impacts of climate change on the suitable habitats and spatial migration of Xanthoceras sorbifolia

Based on the current geographical distribution data of Xanthoceras sorbifolia, we used species distribution modeling (SDM) to predict suitable habitats and spatial migration trends under the future climate scenarios, and identify climatic factors that may cause migration. Under the current climatic conditions, the suitable habitats of Xanthoceras sorbifolia were concentrated in the eastern Gansu, southern Ningxia, north-central Shaanxi, central and southern Shanxi, as well as the eastern edge of Qinghai, the border region of Inner Mongolia-Shaanxi, northern edge of Henan and northwest edge of Hebei. Under the future conditions of climate change, the suitable habitats will remain unchanged, however the highly suitable habitats will trend to decrease and eastward slightly, and the habitat loss rates are 3.73%~16.6% under different climate change scenarios. Under the extreme climate change scenarios, spatial migration patterns of Xanthoceras sorbifolia showed that the most suitable habitats were still persist area, in addition, the emigrant areas were mainly concentrated in the northwest and southeast of suitable habitats and present continuous distribution, while immigrant areas were only scattered in the marginal areas of suitable habitats, including the junction of Inner Mongolia and Shaanxi, northern Shanxi and other regions. Finally, based on the spatial analysis of the multivariate environmental similarity surface (MESS) and the most dissimilar variable (MoD), it was identified that the areas of climate anomaly were mainly located at the northern and southern edge of the currently habitats, which was consistent with the spatial migration patterns. The factors of main climate anomalies which may cause spatial migration were annual average temperature, seasonal precipitation and annual precipitation. The spatial migration areas considered as highly sensitive regions of climate change should be paid more attention. At the same time, reasonable and effective resource utilization and land management strategies should be developed for different spatial migration areas. © 2020, Editorial Board of China Environmental Science. All right reserved.