The strategy for protecting threatened forest species richness in northeastern China from the effects of climate change

Abstract

Climate change has the potential to severely threaten the plant species in the forests of northeastern China. The field surveys performed for this study spanned 4 years and identified the endangered species present in the forests of northeastern China. We conducted a detailed investigation of 2,884 study plots and selected 29 nationally protected plant species (sample sizes ≥ 5), namely, threatened species for further analysis. We modelled and mapped the potential distributions of these 29 threatened species, and found that threatened species richness hotspots are currently distributed in the eastern and northeastern areas of the studied region and will move geographically. This study focused on the strategy for protecting threatened forest species richness by analysing the change trend of species richness and planning of priority protection areas due to climate change.