Implications from climate and landuse change on the global dictribution of plant species richness

Abstract:

Climate change may induce shifts in species distributions and species richness patterns worldwide. The current distribution of global plant species richness can be reasonably well explained by climate and environmental predictors. Future projections from Global Climate Models (GCMs) concurrently indicate considerable possible shifts in water and energy related parameters such as temperature and precipitation within the 21^stcentury, which may in turn have effects on the distribution of different vegetation zones worldwide and their potential to provide suitable habitats for species. In addition, the rate at which climatic conditions change within specific regions and the distance of suitable future climate analogues to recent conditions strongly influence the required species responses. Moreover, the ongoing transformation of natural habitats results in increasingly fragmented landscapes, which further limits the adaptive capacity of species to changing climate conditions in particular in terms of their ability to colonize new suitable habitats.

We present global predictions of the magnitude of possible shifts of plant species richness potential by the end of the century, based on empirical multi-variate relationships with water-energy dynamics and non-climatic predictor variables. We relate these outcomes to projected spatio-temporal dynamics of future climate conditions in relation to their recent analogues, and incorporate land use projections to derive a more comprehensive picture on interactions and trade-offs between these drivers than by separately looking at them.