Email this article 
Implications of human induced changes on the distribution of important plant species in the northwestern coastal desert of Egypt
Abstract
The application of species distribution modeling in deserts is a useful tool for mapping species and assessing the impact of human induced changes on individual species. Such applications are still rare, and this may be attributed to the fact that much of the arid lands and deserts around the world are located in inaccessible areas. Few studies have conducted spatially explicit modeling of plant species distribution in Egypt. The random forest modeling approach was applied to climatic and land-surface parameters to predict the distribution of ten important plant species in an arid landscape in the northwestern coastal desert of Egypt. The impact of changes in land use and climate on the distribution of the plant species was assessed. The results indicate that the changes in land use in the area have resulted in habitat loss for all the modeled species. Projected future changes in land use reveals that all the modeled species will continue to suffer habitat loss. The projected impact of modeled climate scenarios (A1B, A2A and B2A) on the distribution of the modeled species by 2040 varied. Some of the species were projected to be adversely affected by the changes in climate, while other species are expected to benefit from these changes. The combined impact of the changes in land use and climate pose serious threats to most of the modeled species. The study found that all the species are expected to suffer loss in habitat, except Gymnocarpos decanderus. The study highlights the importance of assessing the impact of land use/climate change scenarios on other species of restricted distribution in the area and can help shape policy and mitigation measures directed toward biodiversity conservation in Egypt.
Keywords
Full Text:
PDFReferences
J. Franklin, "Predictive vegetation mapping: geographic modelling of biospatial patterns in relation to environmental gradient," Progress in Physical Geography, vol. 19, pp. 474-199, 1995.
J. Elith and J. R. Leathwick, "Species distribution models: Ecological explanation and prediction across time and space," Annual Rev. Ecol. Evol. Syst., vol. 40, pp. 677-697, 2009.
J. Franklin, Mapping Species Distribution: Spatial Inference and Prediction, Cambridge University Press, 2009.
A. Guisan and N. E. Zimmermann, "Predictive habitat distribution models in ecology," Ecological Modeling, vol. 135, p. 147–186, 2000.
A. Guisan and W. Theuriller, "Predicting species distribution: offering more than simple habitat models," Ecology Letters, vol. 8, p. 993–1009, 2005.
J. Elith, S. J. Phillips, T. Hastie, M. Dudík, Y. E. Chee and C. J. Yates, "A statistical explanation of MaxEnt for ecologists," Diversity and Distributions, vol. 17, p. 43–57, 2011.
P. Segurado and M. B. Araújo, Journal of Biogeography, vol. 31, pp. 1555-1568, 2004.
J. Elith, C. H. Graham, P. R. Anderson, M. Dudik, S. Ferrier, A. Guisan and e. al., "Novel methods improve prediction of species’ distributions from occurrence data," Ecography, vol. 29, pp. 129-151, 2006.
M. J. M. and W. Jetz, "Effects of species’ ecology on the accuracy of distribution models," Ecography, vol. 30, p. 135–151, 2007.
P. A. Hernandez, I. Franke, S. K. Herzog, V. Pacheco, L. Paniagua, H. Quintana and e. al., "Predicting species distributions in poorly-studied landscapes," Biodiversity Conservation, vol. 17, pp. 1353-1366, 2008.
C. Liu, M. White and G. Newell, Ecography, vol. 34, pp. 232-243, 2011.
X. B. Wu and F. E. Smeins, "Multiple-scale habitat modeling approach for rare plant conservation. Landscape and Urban Planning," Landscape and Urban Planning, vol. 51, pp. 11-28, 2000.
J. Franklin, "Moving beyond static species distribution models in support of conservation biogeography," Diversity and Distributions, vol. 16, p. 321–330, 2010.
O. E. Sala, F. S. Chapin, J. J. Armesto, E. Berlow, J. Bloomfield, R. Dirzo and e. al., "Global Biodiversity Scenarios for the Year 2100," Science, vol. 287, pp. 1770-1774, 2000.
R. J. Hijmans, S. E. Cameron, J. L. Parra, P. G. Jones and A. Jarvis, "Very high resolution interpolated climate surfaces for global land areas," International Journal of Climatology, vol. 25, p. 1965–1978, 2005.
J. Ramirez and A. Jarvis, Disaggregation of global circulation model outputs: Decision and policy analysis working paper No. 2. CGIAR Challenge Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security, CCAFS., CGIAR Challenge Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security, CCAFS, 2010.
P. Jones and P. K. Thornton, "Croppers to livestock keepers: livelihood transitions to 2050 in Africa due to climate change," Environmental Science and Policy, vol. 12, p. 427–437, 2009.
A. Jarvis, H. Reuter, A. Nelson and E. Guevara, "Hole-filled SRTM for the globe Version 4," 2008.
A. Bütof, L. R. von Riedmatten, C. F. Dormann, M. Scherer-Lorenzen, E. Welk and H. Bruelheide, "The responses of grassland plants to experimentally simulated climate change depend on land use and region," Global Change Biology, vol. 18, p. 127–137, 2012.
A. C. Hughes, C. Satasook, P. J. J. Bates, S. Bumrungsri and G. Jones, "The projected effects of climatic and vegetation changes on the distribution and diversity of Southeast Asian bats," Global Change Biology, vol. 18, p. 1854–1865, 2012.
J. C. Brito, A. L. Acosta, F. Álvares and F. Cuzin, "Biogeography and conservation of taxa from remote regions: An application of ecological-niche based models and GIS to North-African Canids," Biological Conservation, vol. 142, p. 3020–3029.
M. A. Ayyad and S. I. Ghabbour, "Hot desert of Egypt and Sudan," in Hot desert and arid shrublands, M. Evenari, I. B. Meir and D. Godall, Eds., Amsterdam, Elsevier, 1986, pp. 1-16.
M. A. Ayyad and S. I. Ghabbour, "Dry coastal ecosystem of eastern North Africa," in Dry coastal ecosystems: Africa, America, Asia and Oceania. Ecosystems of the world, vol. 2B, E. van der Maarel, Ed., Amsterdam, Elsevier, 1993, pp. 149-201.
R. Bornkamm and H. Kehl, "Landscape ecology of the western desert of Egypt," Journal of Arid Environments, vol. 17, pp. 271-277, 1989.
SUMAMAD (Sustainable Management of Marginal Drylands), "Omayed Biosphere Reserve and its hinterland," submitted to National UNESCO Commission, Cairo, 2005.
M. S. Abdel Razik, "Plant diversity changes in response to environmental drivers and pressures at El Omayed ‘ROSELT/OSS’ observatory, Egypt," in The future of the drylands, Conference on Desertification and Drylands Research, Tunisia, 19-21 June 2006, C. C. Lee and T. Schaaf, Eds., Netherlands, UNESCO, pp. 289-309.
M. A. Kassas, A. Abdallah, T. Abul-Dahab, G. M. Atta, M. Esawi, H. Farouk and e. al., "Management Plan For Omayed Protected Area.," Med Wet Coast, Global Environment Facility and Egyptian Environment Affairs Agency (UNDP-GEFand EEAA), 2002.
V. Täckholm, Students' Flora of Egypt, 2 ed., Cairo: Cairo University, 1974, p. 888.
L. Boulos, Flora of Egypt, vol. 1, Cairo: Al Hadara Publishing, 1999, p. 417.
L. Boulos, Flora of Egypt, vol. 2, Cairo: Al Hadara Publishing, 2000, p. 352.
L. Boulos, Flora of Egypt, vol. 3, Cairo: Al Hadara Publishing, 2002, p. 373.
L. Boulos, Flora of Egypt, vol. 4, Cairo: Al Hadara Publishing, 2005, p. 617.
L. Boulos, Flora of Egypt: Checklist, Cairo: Al Hadara Publishing, 2009, p. 410.
S. J. Phillips, M. Dudík, J. Elith, C. H. Graham, A. Lehmann, J. Leathwick and S. Ferrier, "Sample selection bias and presence-only distribution models: implications for background and pseudo-absence data," Ecological Applications, vol. 19, pp. 181-197, 2009.
M. Ayyad, Multipurpose Species in Arab African Countries, Cairo: UNESCO, 1998.
S. Z. Heneidy and L. M. Bidak, "Potential uses of plant species of the coastal Mediterranean region, Egypt," Pakistan Journal of Biological Science, vol. 7, pp. 1010-1023, 2004.
M. W. A. W. Halmy, Environmental risk assessment for habitats of the Egyptian northwestern coastal desert (Doctoral dissertation), University of Idaho: ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, 2012.
A. T. Peterson and Y. Nakazawa, "Environmental data sets matter in ecological niche modelling: an example with Solenopsis invicta and Solenopsis richteri," Global Ecology and Biogeography, vol. 17, p. 135–144, 2008.
S. Jelaska, "Vegetation Mapping Applications," in Goemorphometry: concepts, software, applications, T. T. Hengl and I. Evans, Eds., Elsevier, 2009, pp. 141-169.
V. Olaya, "Basic land-surface parameters," in Goemorphometry: concepts, software, applications, T. Hengl and H. I. Reuter, Eds., Elsevier, 2009, pp. 141-169.
I. D. Moore, P. E. Gessler, G. A. Neilsen and G. A. Petersen, "Soil attribute prediction using terrain analysis," Soil Science Society of America Journal, vol. 57, pp. 443-452, 1993.
SAGA (System for Automated Geoscientific Analyses), 2011.
N. E. Zimmermann and F. Kienast, "Predictive mapping of alpine grasslands in Switzerland: Species versus community approach," Journal of Vegetation Science, vol. 10, pp. 469-482, 1999.
D. J. Kriticos, B. L. Webber, A. Leriche, N. Ota, I. Macadam, J. Bathols and J. Scott, "CliMond: global high resolution historical and future scenario climate surfaces for bioclimatic modelling," Methods in Ecology and Evolution, vol. 3, pp. 53-64, 2012.
L. Zevenbergen and C. Thorne, "Quantitative analysis of land surface topography," Earth Surface Processes and Landforms, vol. 2, pp. 47-56, 1987.
S. J. Riley, S. D. DeGloria and R. Elliot, "A terrain ruggedness index that quantifies topographic heterogeneity," Intermountain Journal of Sciences, vol. 5, pp. 23-27, 1999.
M. P. Austin and K. P. Van Niel, "Improving species distribution models for climate change studies: variable selection and scale," Journal of Biogeography, vol. 38, p. 1–8, 2011.
J. Elith, S. J. Phillips, T. Hastie, M. Dudík, Y. E. Chee and C. J. Yates, "A statistical explanation of MaxEnt for ecologists," Diversity and Distributions, vol. 17, p. 1–15, 2010.
R Development Core Team 2.13.1, "A language and environment for statistical computing.," 2011.
A. Liaw and M. Wiener, "Classification and Regression by randomForest," R News, vol. 2, pp. 18-22, 2002.
A. M. Prasad, L. R. Iverson and A. Liaw, "Newer Classification and Regression Tree Techniques: Bagging and Random Forests for Ecological Prediction," Ecosystems, vol. 9, p. 181–199, 2006.
D. R. Cutler, T. C. Edwards, K. H. Beard, A. Cutler, K. T. Hess, J. Gibson and J. J. Lawler, "Random forests for classification in ecology," Ecology, vol. 88, p. 2783–92, 2007.
J. S. Evans and S. A. Cushman, "Gradient modeling of conifer species using random forests," Landscape Ecology, vol. 24, p. 673–683, 2009.
J. N. Williams, C. Seo, J. Thorne, J. K. Nelson, S. Erwin, J. M. O’Brien and M. W. Schwartz, "Using species distribution models to predict new occurrences for rare plants," Diversity and Distributions, vol. 15, p. 565–576, 2009.
L. Breiman, J. H. Frriedman, R. A. Olshen and C. J. Stone, Classification and Regression Trees, (Belmont: Wadsworth International Group), 1984.
J. A. Benediktsson, J. Chanussot and M. Fauvel, "Multiple Classifier Systems in Remote Sensing: From Basics to Recent Developments.," in MCS 2007, vol. 4472, M. Haindl, J. Kittler and F. Roli, Eds., Berlin Heidelberg, Springer-Verlag , 2007, pp. 501-512.
L. Breiman, "Random Forests," Machine learning, vol. 45, pp. 5-32, 2001.
P. O. Gislason, J. A. Benediktsson and J. R. Sveinsson, "Random Forest Classification of Multisource Remote Sensing and Geographic Data.," in Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 2004. IGARSS 04. Proceedings., 2004.
P. Gislason, J. Benediktsson and J. Sveinsson, "Random Forests for land cover classification," Pattern Recognition Letters, vol. 27, pp. 294-300, 2006.
N. Horning, "Random Forests: An algorithm for image classification and generation of continuous fields data sets.," New York, 2010.
V. F. Rodriguez-Galiano, B. Ghimire, J. Rogan, M. Chica-Olmo and J. P. Rigol-Sanchez, "An assessment of the effectiveness of a random forest classifier for land-cover classification," ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, vol. 67, pp. 93-104, 2011.
G. J. Roloff, M. L. Donovan, D. W. Linden and M. L. Strong, "Lessons Learned from Using GIS to Model Landscape-Level Wildlife Habita," in Models for Planning Wildlife Conservation in Large Landscapes, J. Millspaugh and F. R. Thompson III, Eds., Elsevier, 2009, pp. 287-320.
O. Alloche, A. Tsoar and R. Kadmon, "Assessing the accuracy of species distribution models: Prevalence, kappa and the true skill statistic (TSS)," Journal of Applied Ecology, vol. 43, p. 1223–1232, 2006.
J. Cohen, "A coefficient of agreement for nominal scales," Educational and Psychological Measurment, vol. 20, pp. 37-40, 1960.
C. S. Peirce, "The numerical measure of the success of predictions," Science, vol. 4, pp. 453-454, 1884.
S. J. Mason and N. E. Graham, "Areas beneath the relative operating characteristics (ROC) and relative operating levels (ROL) curves statistical significance and interpretation," Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, vol. 128, pp. 2145-2166, 2002.
M. S. Wisz, R. J. Hijmans, J. Li, A. T. Peterson, C. H. Graham and A. Guisan, "Effects of sample size on the performance of species distribution models," Diversity and Distributions, vol. 14, p. 763–773, 2008.
F. Skov and J. Svenning, "Potential Impact of Climatic Change on the Distribution of Forest Herbs in Europe Potential of climatic on the distribution of forest herbs impact change in Europ," Ecography, vol. 27, p. 366–380.
M. R. Trivedi, M. D. Morecroft, P. M. Berry and T. P. Dawson, "Potential effects of climate change on plant communities in three montane nature reserves in Scotland, UK," Biological Conservation, vol. 141, pp. 1665-1675, 2008.
C. Margules and M. Austin, "Biological models for monitoring species decline: The construction and use of databases," Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences, vol. 344, p. 69–75, 1994.
T. Dirnböck, S. Dullinger and G. Grabherret, "A Regional Impact Assessment of Climate and Land-Use Change on Alpine Vegetation," Journal of Biogeography, vol. 30, p. 401–417, 2003.
H. B. Gordon, L. D. Rotstayn, J. L. McGregor, M. R. Dix, E. A. Kowalczyk, S. P. O'Farrell, L. J. Waterman, A. C. Hirst, S. G. Wilson, M. A. Collier, I. G. Watterson and T. I. Elliott, "The CSIRO Mk3 Climate System Model. Aspendale: CSIRO Atmospheric Research. CSIRO Atmospheric," CSIRO, 2002.
K. H. Shaltout, "Monitoring flora of the Omayed Biosphere Reserve and measures of rehabilitation," in Proceedings of the International Workshop on Combating Desertification, 2002.
S. Manel, H. C. Williams and S. J. Ormerod, "Evaluating presence – absence models in ecology: the need to account for prevalence," Journal of Applied Ecology, vol. 38, p. 921–931, 2001.
T. Newbold, "Applications and limitations of museum data for conservation and ecology, with particular attention to species distribution models," Progress in Physical Geography, vol. 34, p. 3–22, 2010.
I. Vaughan and S. J. Ormerod, "Improving the quality of distribution models for conservation by addressing shortcomings in the field collection of training data," Conservation Biology, vol. 17, pp. 1601-1611, 2003.
S. A. K. Hammouda, A study of vegetation and land use in the western Mediterranean desert of Egypt. (Doctoral dissertation), Alexandria: Alexandria University, 1988, p. 194.
M. A. Ayyad, "Vegetation and Environment of the Western Mediterranean Coastal Land of Egypt: The Habitat of Sand Dunes," Journal of Ecology, vol. 61, pp. 509-523, 1973.
M. A. Ayyad and M. Y. Ammar, "Relationship between Local Physiographic Variations and the Distribution of Common Mediterranean Desert Species," Vegetatio, vol. 27, pp. 163-176, 1973.
M. A. Ayyad and R. El-Ghareeb, "Microvariations in edaphic factors and species distribution in a Mediterranean salt desert," Oikos, vol. 23, pp. 125-131, 1972.
M. A. Ayyad and R. E. M. El-Ghareeb, "Salt Marsh Vegetation of the Western Mediterranean Desert of Egypt," Vegetatio, vol. 49, pp. 3-19, 1982.
M. A. Ayyad and M. Y. Ammar, "Vegetation and Environment of the Western Mediterranean Coastal Land of Egypt: II. The habitat of inland ridges," Journal of Ecology, vol. 62, pp. 439-456, 1974.
ROSELT/OSS, "El Omayed ROSELT/OSS Observatory," 2005.
B. B. Salem, "Biosphere reserves on North-Western Egyptian coast, a site for monitoring biodiversity and integrated water management," in Developments in Water Science, vol. 50, A. S. Alsharhan and W. Wood, Eds., Elsevier, 2003, pp. 119-128.
J. Franklin, "Predicting the distribution of shrub species in southern California from climate and terrain-derived variables," Journal of Vegetation Science, vol. 9, pp. 733-748, 1998.
H. R. Akçakaya, M. A. Mccarthy and J. L. Pearce, "Linking landscape data with population viability analysis: Management options for the helmeted Lichenostomus melanops cassidix," Biological Conservation, vol. 73, p. 169–176, 1995.
H. R. Akçakaya, "Linking population-level risk assessment with landscape and habitat models," The Science of the Total Environment, vol. 274, pp. 283-291, 2001.
A. Guisan and J. Theurillat, "Equilibrium modeling of alpine plant distribution: how far can we go?," Phytocoenologia, vol. 30, p. 353–384, 2000.
C. Peppler-Lisbach and B. Schröder, "Predicting the species composition of Nardus stricta communities by logistic regression modeling," Journal of Vegetation Science, vol. 15, p. 623–634, 2004.
C. D. Thomas, A. Cameron, R. E. Green, M. Bakkenes, L. J. Beaumont, Y. C. Collingham and e. al., "Extinction risk from climate change," Nature, vol. 427, pp. 145-148, 2004.
S. M. McMahon, S. P. Harrison, W. S. Armbruster, P. J. Bartlein, C. M. Beale, M. E. Edwards, J. Kattge and e. al., "Improving assessment and modelling of climate change impacts on global terrestrial biodiversity," Trends in ecology and evolution, vol. 26, p. 249–59, 2011.
P. G. Jones, P. K. Thornton and J. Heinke, "Generating characteristic daily weather data using downscaled climate model data from the IPCC ’ s Fourth Assessment," 2009.
P. G. Jones and P. K. Thornton, "Generating downscaled weather data from a suite of climate models for agricultural modelling applications," Agricultural Systems, vol. 114, p. 1–5, 2013.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.21622/resd.2015.01.2.243
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
Copyright (c) 2015 Marwa Waseem Halmy, Paul E. Gessler, Paul E. Gessler, Selim Z. Heneidy, Selim Z. Heneidy
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Renewable Energy and Sustainable Development
E-ISSN: 2356-8569
P-ISSN: 2356-8518
Published by:
Academy Publishing Center (APC)
Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport (AASTMT)
Alexandria, Egypt
