Conservation Challenges and Opportunities for Fokienia hodginsii in the Wuyi Mountains Under Climate Change and Human Influence

TL;DR

This study assesses how climate change and human activity threaten the rare conifer Fokienia hodginsii in China's Wuyi Mountains, finding a potential 97.6% habitat loss by 2090.

Contribution

The study introduces a comprehensive evaluation of Fokienia hodginsii's habitat suitability using multiple models and climate scenarios, emphasizing the dominant role of climate variables.

Findings

MaxEnt model outperformed others with AUC of 0.973 and TSS of 0.704 in predicting Fokienia hodginsii distribution.

Climate variables accounted for 90.9% of the influence on F. hodginsii's distribution.

SSP585 scenario predicts a 97.6% loss of suitable habitat for F. hodginsii by the 2090s.

Abstract

Fokienia hodginsii (Dunn) A. Henry & H. H. Thomas, as an evergreen Tertiary relic conifer species of great ornamental, medical, and ecological value, has not been fully explored in terms of its risk associated with distribution under climate change scenarios. The Wuyi Mountains region is of exceptional ecological significance and provides important habitats for F. hodginsii. We compared four species distribution models (SDMs): Maximum Entropy Model (MaxEnt), random forest (RF), boosted regression tree (BRT), and generalized linear model (GLM) using climate variables, alongside soil variables and human footprint index, and used the best to make a comprehensive assessment of F. hodginsii's environmental suitability under shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) 126 and 585. Our results indicate that MaxEnt model provided the best discriminative power and prediction accuracy in species distribution predictions, with Area Under Curve (AUC) value of 0.973, True Skill Statistic (TSS) value of 0.704, and Kappa of 0.395. We found that climate variables played the dominant role in shaping the distribution of F. hodginsii and accounted for 90.9% of the permutation importance. Furthermore, an overall trend of shrinking distribution was predicted for F. hodginsii, and it would face a huge loss of 97.6% suitable habitat under the scenario of SSP585. These findings indicate a potential loss of economic and ecological value of F. hodginsii, highlighting the risks posed to forest ecosystems in the Wuyi Mountains and underscoring the need for comprehensive conservation strategies to protect the species along with the economic benefits it provides.

We assessed current and future habitat suitability for the vulnerable conifer Fokienia hodginsii across the Wuyi Mountains using climate, soil, and human footprint data, comparing four species distribution models and selecting MaxEnt as best. Climate—especially temperature ranges—dominated suitability, while soil and human influence were secondary. CMIP6 ensemble projections (SSP126/585) indicate severe range contraction, with up to ~97.6% habitat loss by the 2090s under SSP585, underscoring the need for targeted conservation.

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