Climate envelope predictions indicate an enlarged suitable wintering distribution for Great Bustards (Otis tarda dybowskii) in China for the 21st century.

نویسندگان

  • Chunrong Mi
  • Huettmann Falk
  • Yumin Guo
چکیده

The rapidly changing climate makes humans realize that there is a critical need to incorporate climate change adaptation into conservation planning. Whether the wintering habitats of Great Bustards (Otis tarda dybowskii), a globally endangered migratory subspecies whose population is approximately 1,500-2,200 individuals in China, would be still suitable in a changing climate environment, and where this could be found, is an important protection issue. In this study, we selected the most suitable species distribution model for bustards using climate envelopes from four machine learning models, combining two modelling approaches (TreeNet and Random Forest) with two sets of variables (correlated variables removed or not). We used common evaluation methods area under the receiver operating characteristic curves (AUC) and the True Skill Statistic (TSS) as well as independent test data to identify the most suitable model. As often found elsewhere, we found Random Forest with all environmental variables outperformed in all assessment methods. When we projected the best model to the latest IPCC-CMIP5 climate scenarios (Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) 2.6, 4.5 and 8.5 in three Global Circulation Models (GCMs)), and averaged the project results of the three models, we found that suitable wintering habitats in the current bustard distribution would increase during the 21st century. The Northeast Plain and the south of North China were projected to become two major wintering areas for bustards. However, the models suggest that some currently suitable habitats will experience a reduction, such as Dongting Lake and Poyang Lake in the Middle and Lower Yangtze River Basin. Although our results suggested that suitable habitats in China would widen with climate change, greater efforts should be undertaken to assess and mitigate unstudied human disturbance, such as pollution, hunting, agricultural development, infrastructure construction, habitat fragmentation, and oil and mine exploitation. All of these are negatively and intensely linked with global change.

برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

منابع مشابه

Meta‐barcoding insights into the spatial and temporal dietary patterns of the threatened Asian Great Bustard (Otis tarda dybowskii) with potential implications for diverging migratory strategies

Food resources are often not sufficient to satisfy the nutritional and energetic requirements during winter conditions at high latitudes. Dietary analysis is a prerequisite to fully understanding the feeding ecology of a species and the nature of trophic interactions. Previous dietary studies of Asian Great Bustard (Otis tarda dybowskii) relied on behavioral observations, resulting in categoriz...

متن کامل

Habitat Suitability Modeling of Great Bustard, Otis tarda, using ENFA and GIS

During the last century, the global population of the Great Bustard (Otis tarda) has decreased and this species is now considered vulnerable. In Iran, the status of this species is much more critical and its distribution is limited to a few areas of Bukan county. We modeled the suitability of habitat for Great Bustards in Bukan County with the goal of determining the most important of distribut...

متن کامل

Partial Migration, and Lek and Nesting Area Fidelity in Female Great Bustards’

We examined the seasonal movements of wing-tagged and radio-marked adult female Great Bustards Otis tarda in a population in northwestern Spain. Four different movement patterns were found: females that migrated between breeding and wintering areas (20%) females that only left their year-round home range area to mate (32%), females that migrated from a wintering-mating area to a nesting-summeri...

متن کامل

Migration Patterns in Male Great Bustards (Otis tarda)

The Great Bustard (Otis tarda) is distributed from Iberia and Morocco in the west to China in the east and has been considered sedentary in all but the northern and eastern parts of its range (Gewalt 1959, Glutz et al. 1973, Cramp and Simmons 1980). However, some studies have reported seasonal changes in population numbers in different areas in the Iberian Peninsula (Hidalgo and Carranza 1990, ...

متن کامل

Great bustards Otis tarda in Morocco: status in spring 1999 and evidence of a decline in recent decades

A spring (1999) census was conducted of successful breeding in 1998. We argue that the small number of birds, a population sex ratio of 1 : 3.3 in great bustards Otis tarda in north-western Morocco, favour of females, evidence for a range contraction, and where a poorly known population of this species occurs. Sixty-four birds were seen in four distinct areas. probable isolation from other grea...

متن کامل

ذخیره در منابع من


  با ذخیره ی این منبع در منابع من، دسترسی به آن را برای استفاده های بعدی آسان تر کنید

برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

عنوان ژورنال:
  • PeerJ

دوره 4  شماره 

صفحات  -

تاریخ انتشار 2016