Current and future habitat suitability modelling of Bambusa teres outside forest areas in Nepal under climate change scenarios

Abstract

Bambusa teres Buch.-Ham. ex Munro (syn. Bambusa nutans subsp. capulata Stapleton) is a fast-growing perennial bamboo that has ecological, economic, cultural and climate change mitigation benefits. However, information on its current and future potential distribution outside forest areas across Nepal and the key factors affecting its growth and distribution are little known. We used a total of 298 occurrence points obtained from the National Bamboo Resource Assessment and 23 environmental variables to project the distribution of B. teres throughout its potential range in Nepal. Maximum entropy model (MaxEnt) was utilized for this study. We assessed the performance of the model using a receiver operating characteristic curve and evaluated the relative importance of predictor variables through a Jackknife procedure. The model achieved a high level of performance with an area under the curve value of 0.928. Precipitation of the coldest quarter (bio_19), temperature seasonality (bio_4) and precipitation seasonality (bio_15) were the significant contributing variables for the distribution of B. teres. The most suitable habitat for B. teres, with a suitability index >0.6, covered 9264.6 km², with large sections in Eastern and Central Nepal. However, under future climate change scenarios, the area of suitable habitat for the species is projected to increase across Nepal. This study serves as a baseline for assessing potential climate change impacts on B. teres and will enable the development of adaptive measures to protect and establish various bamboo populations outside forest areas in Nepal and globally.