Theoretical and Applied Climatology ( IF 3.4 ) Pub Date : 2020-05-26 , DOI: 10.1007/s00704-020-03267-4 Jianguo Wu
Quantifying the uncertainty and risk of reducing distribution ranges of the birds in a shifting climate is crucial regarding decision-making on the adaptation of biodiversity to climate warming. By using the representative concentration pathway scenarios of changing climate, fuzzy set classifications, and Monte Carlo techniques, an investigation of the uncertainty and risk of shifting ranges for 114 endemic birds in China from climate change was conducted. In response to non-stochastic changing climate conditions, the abundance of 114 species would increase in some locations of western and northeastern China and would decline in some sites of southeastern, eastern, northern, and central China; approximately 40–60 species would lose less than 20% or 20–40% of their current suitable areas, and about 110 species would exhibit distributions covering more than 80% of their total ranges. For stochastic changing climate scenarios, the number of the birds that lost distinct extents of the suitable ranges decreased with enhancing the likelihood; with a probability of beyond 0.6, the number of the birds that lost less than 20%, 20–40%, 40–60%, 60–80%, and greater than 80% of their present ranges was approximately 13–20, 10–22, 1–8, 1–3, and 5–8, respectively, and the number of the birds that inhabited less than 20%, 20–40%, 40–60%, 60–80%, and over 80% of their all suitable ranges was approximately 7–10, 15–25, 6–11, 1–4, and 26–30, respectively. Approximately 36 species of 114 endemic bird species will be posed extinction risk by climate warming if without any adaptation measures.