Potential habitat modeling of endemic species is an appropriate method to maintain biodiversity, ecosystem function and rehabilitation of rangeland ecosystems. Astragalus caragana, A. cyclophyllon and A. podolobus are endemic in Iran's rangelands and some neighboring countries. The three native species could endure environmental stresses due to their distinctive ecophysiological characteristics. They play important roles in sustainable pastures production, recreation and improvement. They suffer severe threat from many factors including; grazing, agriculture and invasive exotic species. We analyzed the potential habitat of three native plant species in central Iran basing on the grid map with the resolution of 1-km. We used inventory records from field surveys, herbarium collections and 22 environmental factors to explore the environmental influences on given species distribution by Maximum entropy (Maxent) model. Maxent is a species distribution model that uses species occurrence and environmental data for predicting potential species. The results of our study indicated species occurrence has strong correlation with environmental factors such as mean temperature of wettest season, elevation and precipitation of coldest season. We evaluated the model accuracy by AUC (area under the receiver operating characteristic curve) based on an independent test data set. AUC values indicated the high power of Maxent to create potential habitat map (AUC A. caragana =0.988, AUC A. cyclophyllon =0.927, AUC A. podolobus =0.923). It is important to consider that AUC values tend to be lower for species that have broad distribution scope, such as A. podolobus distribution. Most suitable potential habitat distributions of the three species were predicted in the western and southwestern parts of rangelands in Isfahan province. Visual comparisons of the actual distribution map of the three species with produced Maxent maps represent a good agreement. In general, the model demonstrated that the occurrence of the given species is highly probable when the elevation is between 2,200 and 3,000 m and mean temperature of wettest season less than 3°C. This model, therefore, can be applied to recognize potential sites for rangeland reclamation projects.

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Ecological restoration plays a vital role in the management of degraded ecosystems; nevertheless, the success of restoration plans depends to a large extent on determining optimal habitats for target species' growth and survival. Ecological niche modeling can be used to predict where climate is presently suitable for a particular species used in restoration, and where suitable climates will be located in the future. Here, we used ensemble ecological modeling to identify areas suitable for restoration of the arid shrub Haloxylon persicum in southeast Iran. We generated environmental suitability predictions for H. persicum restorations from eight different niche modeling algorithms and averaged these predictions to generate an ensemble model prediction. We present projections for the climate suitability of H. persicum for the present climate and the years 2050 and 2070 under the RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 emissions scenarios and for three different global circulation models. Our model projected the optimum mean annual temperature for this species to be between 35.5 and 37 C, the optimum temperature of the coldest quarter to be between 3.5 and 13 C and the optimum precipitation of the coldest quarter to be between 65 to 90 mm. Based on our results, H. persicum is predicted to persist north of 27 N latitude in southeast Iran under current and future conditions; however, the availability of habitat suitable for H. persicum restoration is expected to dramatically diminish under future climate change. This study will help identify and prioritize locations for ecological restoration of this species in the face of climate change.