Changes in Potential Suitable Habitats, Species Turnover, and Conservation Gaps of Wild Plants in the Tarim Basin, China

ABSTRACT

Climate change is reshaping potential suitable habitats, species richness, and plant communities in arid regions. However, multi‐species assessments of distributional responses, species turnover, and conservation gaps for wild plants remain limited. Using distribution records of 608 wild plant species and 12 environmental variables, we employed the biomod2 ensemble species distribution model to predict potential suitable habitats under current conditions and three future climate scenarios for the 2050s and 2070s. Based on these predictions, we analyzed potential species richness, species turnover, conservation gaps, and habitat loss risks. The results demonstrated that the model possessed excellent predictive performance. Potential suitable habitats were mainly constrained by moisture and thermal conditions and were also influenced by human activities. Current potential species richness exhibited a pattern of higher richness in mountain and foothill transition zones and lower richness in the basin interior. Under future scenarios, areas of high potential richness are projected to continue shrinking and become increasingly fragmented, and the centroid of potential richness is projected to shift northeastward. As emission intensity increases and time advances, potential suitable habitats for most species are expected to contract and habitat loss risks to increase, with herbaceous plants being more sensitive than woody plants. Further examination of 10 representative species of conservation or ecological relevance showed deteriorating habitat‐loss risk from the 2050s to the 2070s, including several nationally or regionally protected wild plants. Hotspots of species turnover are concentrated in the central‐western basin, the northern foothill zone, and the oasis‐desert ecotone. The spatial overlap between conservation priority areas and existing nature reserves is only 1.94%, indicating a clear mismatch between the current reserve network and regions where future species composition is expected to change substantially. Future conservation efforts should focus on mountain‐basin transition zones, the foothill oasis‐desert ecotone, and high‐turnover conservation gaps, while optimizing spatial coverage and ecological connectivity. The findings provide a scientific basis for wild plant diversity conservation, precise management, and optimization of conservation system gaps in the Tarim Basin.