Article The Potential Distribution of Juniperus rigida Sieb. et Zucc. Vary Diversely in China under the Stringent and High GHG Emission Scenarios Combined Bioclimatic, Soil, and Topographic Factors Zhenjiang Lv 1,2 and Dengwu Li 1,2,* 1 College of Forestry, Northwest A & F University, Yangling, Xianyang 712100, China; lv.fl
[email protected] 2 Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Economic Plant Resources Development and Utilization, Yangling, Xianyang 712100, China * Correspondence:
[email protected] Abstract: Global warming poses an enormous threat to particular species with shifts to their suitable habitat. Juniperus rigida Sieb. et Zucc., an endemic species to East Asia and a pioneer species in the Loess plateau region, is endangered because of the shrinking and scattered habitat threatened by climate change. For the sake of analyzing the impact of climate warming on its possible habitat, we herein projected the current and future potential habitats of J. rigida in China and comparatively analyzed the ecological habitat changes in three main distribution regions. There were 110 specimen records of J. rigida collected across China and 22 environmental datasets, including bioclimatic variables and soil and topographical factors, selected by the Pearson Correlation Coefficient. The Citation: Lv, Z.; Li, D. The Potential MaxEnt model based on specimen presence and environmental factors was used for projecting the Distribution of Juniperus rigida Sieb. et potential habitats of J. rigida in China in the 2050s and the 2070s of RCP 2.6 and RCP 8.5 scenarios. The Zucc. Vary Diversely in China under results indicated an excellence model performance with the average value of the area under curve the Stringent and High GHG (AUC) is 0.928.