Modeling suitable climate for Eucalyptus grandis under future climates scenarios in Brazil

This study aimed to map areas climatically favorable for Eucalyptus grandis Hill ex Maiden in Brazil for the current climate, and predict possible changes in these sites in relation to future climate scenarios. For doing this we used the Species Distribution Modeling (DEM), generating potential areas in Australia and projecting them to Brazil in the present and future climate scenarios, using the concept of maximum entropy (Maxent 3.3.3k). We considered 70 sites of natural occurrence of E. grandis in Australia and seven bioclimatic variables, as follows: mean annual temperature, variation of annual temperature, annual precipitation, precipitation of wettest month, precipitation of driest month, variation of rainfall and altitude. The modeling of the current climate considered the period from 1950 to 2000. The climatic projections were considered as the A1B scenario and the HadCM3 model for three periods: 2010-2039, 2040-2069 and 2070-2099. All models were significant (p < 0.001); showed high AUC values (> 0.95) and low omission errors. The favorable areas for E. grandis at the present time was approximately 1.500.000 km(2), concentrating on southern, southeastern and midwestern Brazil. When we simulated future climates, the area decreased by 2.8, 4.7 and 3.8% for the scenarios 2010-2039, 2040-2069 and 2070-2099, respectively. The major changes were the decrease in the southeastern region and increase in the northern region. The modeling showed a decrease in the area when considering the future scenarios. Although new areas have been identified as suitable areas, there was a decrease of already known as suitable areas. The use of modeling can be useful in planning the breeding and expansion of genetic material to new areas, and assist in identifying areas in which eucalypt culture becomes more vulnerable to climate, disease and pests.