Range reshuffling: Climate change, invasive species, and the case of Nothofagus forests in Aotearoa New Zealand

Abstract

AimThe impact of climate change on forest biodiversity and ecosystem services will be partly determined by the relative fortunes of invasive and native forest trees under future conditions. Aotearoa New Zealand has high conservation value native forests and one of the world's worst invasive tree problems. We assess the relative effects of habitat redistribution on native Nothofagus and invasive conifer (Pinaceae) species in New Zealand as a case study on the compounding impacts of climate change and tree invasions.LocationAotearoa New Zealand.MethodsWe use species distribution models (SDMs) to predict the current and future distribution of habitat for five native Nothofagus species and 13 invasive conifer species under two 2070 climate scenarios. We calculate habitat loss/gain for all species and examine overlap between the invasive and native species now and in future.ResultsMost species will lose habitat overall. The native species saw large changes in the distribution of habitat with extensive losses in North Island and gains mostly in South Island. Concerningly, we found that most new habitat for Nothofagus was also suitable for at least one invasive species. However, there were refugia for the native species in the wetter parts of the climate space.Main ConclusionIf the predicted changes in habitat distribution translate to shifts in forest distribution, it would cause widespread ecological disruption. We discuss how acclimation, adaptation and biotic interactions may prevent/delay some changes. But we also highlight that the poor establishment capacity of Nothofagus, and the contrasting ability of the conifers to invade, will present persistent conservation challenges in areas of both new habitat and forest retreat. Pinaceae are problematic invaders globally, and our results highlight that control of invasions and active native forest restoration will likely be key to managing forest biodiversity under future climates.

Predicting the habitat suitability and niche dynamics of two Ziziphus species in response to climate change

“…Additionally, future climate variables were obtained from the 6 th assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC AR6) for two distinct Shared Socioeconomic Pathways scenarios (SSP-126 and SSP-585). These climate projections were derived using the Global Circulation Model (GCM) of GFDL-ESM4 (Shaban et al, 2023;Mathias et al, 2023) and span two temporal scales: 2041-2070 and 2071-2100. To address collinearity issues among these variables, hierarchical cluster analysis was employed with Pearson's correlation coefficient (with a cutoff set at 0.7) (Gallego-Narbón et al, 2023).…”