Will Global Climate Change Facilitate Plant Invasions in Conservation Areas?. | [Pakistan Journal of Botany • 2019]

Author(s):

1. Chunjing Wang: State Key Laboratory of Plateau Ecology and Agriculture, Qinghai University, Xining 810016, China: College of Agriculture and Animal Husbandry, Qinghai University, Xining 810016, China

2. JIZHONG WAN: State Key Laboratory of Plateau Ecology and Agriculture, Qinghai University, Xining 810016, China

3. Zhixiang Zhang: School of Nature Conservation, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing, P. R. China

Abstract:

Climate change may increase plant invasion risk, but few studies have paid attention to the relationship between climate change and plant invasion in conservation areas at a global scale. The primary objective of our study was to determine whether climate change would allow or even increase the likelihood that invasive alien plant species would invade conservation areas across the world and in particular regions. We modeled current and future potential distributions of invasive alien plant species using bioclimatic variables in the program Maxent. Our study found that global climate change would not lead to plant invasions in every conservation area, but it would provide the conditions for few invasive plant species to impact conservation areas in some regions. Greenhouse gas concentrations could aggravate the regional invasion of invasive plant species and make larger changes of ability of invasive plant species to invade conservation areas in low gas concentration scenario than high gas concentration scenario. Immediate measures must be taken to deal with this problem, such as developing global indicators of biological invasion and designing long-term management plans at different geographical scales.

Page(s): 1395-1403

DOI: 10.30848/PJB2019-4(6)

Published: Journal: Pakistan Journal of Botany, Volume: 51, Issue: 4, Year: 2019

Keywords:

GIS , Climate change , Conservation areas , Cooccurring species , Invasive alien plant species , Maxent

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