Understanding the Limiting Climatic Factors on the Suitable Habitat of Chinese Alfalfa

Chinese alfalfa (Medicago sativa) is one of the most widely planted species in China. It has considerable economic potential and plays an important role soil water conservation. In order to conduct scientific cultivation alfalfa, we collected 100 occurrence records from herbarium publications 19 climatic variables BIOCLIM simulate suitable habitat identified key factors by MaxEnt GIS software. The result shows that model performed well, with average test AUC value 0.86 10-fold cross validation. distribution mainly arid semi-arid areas north northwest China, about 15.2% (1.46 million km2) China’s total land area, highly area Loess Hilly region Xinjiang. main affecting this hydrological-related (PDM, PS, AP, PDQ PCQ), which explained 58.6% variation, limiting southern, northern, northwestern Tibetan plateau boundaries were PDM, AMT, AP MTCM, respectively. thresholds core are 0.0–14.0 mm 23.8–108.2% 3.9–15.5 °C 14.0–664.0 1.0–47.0 PDQ, 2.0–51.0 PCQ. results improve our understanding for suggest a priority management measures corresponding factor.