Predicting the impacts of climate change on potential suitability habitats of three Juniperus trees in Mexico

Future climate change will have severe impacts on the geographic distribution of species, likely leading to shifts in their suitable habitat and eventually to the extinction of some species whose distribution areas are restricted. However, some species may respond differently to climate change. In this study we model the current and future potential habitats of three Juniperus species with different population trends: J. jaliscana, J. monticola and J. pinchotii. Occurrence records were collected across their distribution, combined with environmental and topographical variables to generate a MaxEnt model of the potential distributions in the years 2050 and 2070. The most important environmental variables were precipitation of wettest quarter for J. jaliscana, maximum temperature of warmest month for J. monticola, and mean temperature of coldest quarter for J. pinchotii. Our results showed that the habitat suitability of these three Juniperus species decreased overall by more than 50% under the climate change scenarios. These findings contributed to a better understanding of the impacts of climate change on ecological distribution of these species and could inform decisions regarding to their conservation, and management, and sustainable use strategies, as well as to implement active ex situ conservation strategies.