Potential Distribution Modeling of Useful Brazilian Trees with Economic Importance

Abstract

Brazil is one of the countries with the greatest biodiversity, being covered by diverse ecosystems. Native trees commercially planted generate numerous benefits for communities, providing cultural, recreational, tourism riches, as well as ecological benefits, such as nutrient regulation and carbon sequestration. Thus, this work aimed to generate potential distribution modeling for the Brazilian forest species, to provide information that will serve as a strategy for conservation, restoration and commercial plantation of them, that is, encouraging the use of legal native species in the forest sector. Eleven tree species and 19 bioclimatic variables were selected. The software Maxent 3.3.3 was applied in the generation of the distribution models and the area under the curve of receiver operating characteristic (AUC) was used to analyze the model. The Jackknife test contributed to identify which bioclimatic variables are most important or influential in the model. The models showed AUC values ranged from 0.857 to 0.983. The species with higher AUC values were Araucaria angustifolia, Mimosa scabrella and Euterpe edulis, respectively. The maximum temperature of warmest month showed the highest influence for the most species, followed by the mean diurnal range and annual precipitation. It was observed that for some species, there were restricted areas of environmental suitability, such as Araucaria angustifolia, Ilex paraguariensis and Mimosa scabrella. The models used could trace the potential distribution areas using the environmental variables, and these models contribute significantly to sustainable forest management.

Modelling Climatically Suitable Areas for Mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla King) and Their Shifts across Neotropics: The Role of Protected Areas

“…In addition, it is important to point out that the areas suitable for the species indicate a widely discontinuous and fragmented pattern, which is similar to that reported in previous studies where it is established that the species would be almost in danger of extinction due to the fact that its populations are very restricted and fragmented [169,170]. Furthermore, considering the spatial distribution of suitable areas in Brazil, previous studies reported that the state of Acre had the most suitable climatic conditions for the species [84,85]. These areas do not coincide with the results obtained in this study, as our models suggest that the largest proportion of areas reported for Brazil would be encountered in the states of Bahia and Espírito Santo.…”

“…This is due to the fact that they are susceptible to the configurations and parameterizations used [142]. Previous studies conducted about Mahogany use the maximum entropy algorithm (Maxent) as the only algorithm to carry out the modelling of the species [29,[82][83][84][85]. We imply that this selection may be based mainly on the fact that Maxent is one of the algorithms most explored and used in the existing literature [143].…”

“…One of the main achievements of this study was to include in the creation of the models the entire known native distribution range of Mahogany for the first time. Previous research has been done to model the potential geographic distribution of Mahogany in Mexico [17,29,83,99,100] and Brazil [84,85]. However, locally calibrated SDMs are limited by partial representation of the ecological niche of the species and therefore future projections may be biased [87][88][89].…”

“…Among all the investigations previously conducted for the species considering the use of SDMs in Mexico and Brazil [29,[82][83][84][85], the current study stands out for being the first to perform an intersection analysis between the predicted areas under current and future conditions and the PA network. This analysis was performed in order to identify areas where the species could be protected under immediate short-term and long-term conservation statuses, as this could be one of the best in situ conservation strategies [139].…”

“…Previous studies have attempted to model the potential geographic distribution of Mahogany in Mexico [29,82,83] and Brazil [84,85]. However, in these countries, only a partial fraction of the climatic niche of the species was considered (only the presence records for the species in one country).…”