bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.08.25.265991; this version posted August 25, 2020. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under aCC-BY 4.0 International license. 1 2 3 4 Assessing distribution changes of selected native and alien invasive plant species 5 under changing climatic conditions in Nyeri County, Kenya 6 7 Julius Maina Waititu1#*, Charles Ndegwa Mundia1, Arthur W Sichangi1 8 9 1Institute of Geomatics, GIS and Remote Sensing, Dedan Kimathi University of Technology, 10 Nyeri, Kenya 11 #Current Address: Department of Spatial Planning, Kenyatta University, Nairobi, Kenya 12 13 *Corresponding author 14 Email:
[email protected](JMW);
[email protected](JMW) bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.08.25.265991; this version posted August 25, 2020. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under aCC-BY 4.0 International license. 15 Abstract 16 Changes in climatic conditions increases the risks of native and alien taxa expanding in 17 geographical range and causing habitat transformations. The role of climate change in 18 enhancing bio-invasions in local natural environments need to be assessed to guide on effective 19 species management policy formulations. In this present study, we used species presence 20 records, predictor variables and an ensemble of General Circulation Models data to predict 21 suitable ecological niches for five of the selected invasive plant species within Nyeri County, 22 Kenya.