Predicting the habitat suitability and species richness of plants of Great Himalayan National Park under different climate change scenarios.

This study elucidates the distribution of plants in Great Himalayan National Park (GHNP), India, in current and different future climate change scenarios. The distribution of plants and habitat suitability in GHNP due to climate change was analyzed by MaxEnt, species distribution model (SDM) algorithm. In this study, species presence records were retrieved through field survey and published literature. We have projected the distribution of 44 plant species using MaxEnt and tested whether GHNP is performing well in conserving the plant species. Initially, we have constructed a model for each species and created the habitat suitability map from average of ascii files and later we added the maps of all species in order to make binary map to show the species richness in the selected climate scenarios. The model was created using the HADGEM-2 global circulation model in 2050 and 2070 years by using climate change situations of RCP 2.6 and RCP 8.5. The area under curve (AUC) values in the final models of 44 plant species were in the range 0.70-0.97 that indicates statistically significant results. The model identified precipitation of driest month followed by altitude and annual mean temperature as most determining variables in the distribution of plants of GHNP in selected climate scenarios. In the present study, we found that overall suitable habitat increased for nine species, decreased for thirty-four, and unchanged for one plant species in terms of percent area change from current to future scenarios. So these nine species were found to be more adaptable towards changing climate than the other plant species in this study. The species richness was high in western and southwestern parts of GHNP in the current scenario, however under future climatic scenarios, species richness shows a decreasing trend. Based on our findings, it can be concluded that GHNP should be prioritized for conserving the plant species.