Climate change and landscape fragmentation are considered to threaten biodiversity. This study predicted the potential future distribution of three warm-adapted evergreen broadleaved plants, Pittosporum tobira, Raphiolepis indica var. umbellata, Eurya emarginata, in the Republic of Korea (ROK) based on the association of climate change, metapopulation dynamics and landscape fragmentation compared to the predictions that assumed non-limitation on dispersal capacity and no landscape fragmentation. For this, we first projected current and future climatically suitable habitat for three species under climate change, full dispersal and no landscape fragmentation using an ensemble approach. Then, a GIS-based cellular automata model, MigClim, was applied to future distribution for the three species under two dispersal scenarios (realistic dispersal, realistic dispersal with long distance dispersal event) in association with four elapsed times for the first seeds production (5, 10, 15 and 20 year), static land fragmentation and climate change. We introduced twenty climate change scenarios projected under four representative concentration pathway (RCP 2.6, 4.5, 6.0, and 8.5) scenarios from five different global circulation models (GCMs) to simulate the future distributions (2041~2060) of three evergreens.
Results/Conclusions
The results showed that the suitable habitats of three plant species expanded under climate change, but, given the dispersal limitation functions and landscape fragmentation, there is a significant difference with the predictions considering two dispersal scenarios and land fragmentation. In addition, our results suggested that landscape fragmentation was most effective on species distribution. The level of expansion for three plant species was predicted to decrease approximately 3 to 50 % under only dispersal limitations and 50 to 71% under dispersal limitations and landscape fragmentation.