Predicting the current and future potential distribution of Commiphora Africana in Ethiopia under climate change using MaxEnt. model

Climate change significantly impacts the geographic distribution of plant habitats globally. This study aims to model and map the current and future distribution of the woodland forest tree Commiphora africana in Ethiopia under changing climate conditions. A MaxEnt model was used to predict the current and future potential spatiotemporal distribution of C. africana. Species occurrence data (409 field-based occurrence points) and environmental variables (19 bioclimatic and three topographic) were used to model the potential spatiotemporal distribution area under current and future representative concentration pathways (RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5) for the years 2050 and 2070. The predictive performance of the model was evaluated by the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve, which has excellent results with an AUC value of more than 0.9. The result of the jackknife test revealed that precipitation of the coldest quarter (bio 19), annual temperature range (bio 07), and topography has a higher contribution to the model with 29.7%, 23.4%, and 9.8%, respectively. The current potential suitable area coverage revealed that highly suitable (8941.2 km2), moderately suitable (55,584.72 km2), low suitable (86,977.54 km2), and not suitable (981,752.9 km2), respectively. Moreover, with RCP 4.5 in 2050 and 2070, highly suitable areas will be 11,594.61 km2 and 13081.21 km2. Similarly, with RCP8.5 in 2050 and 2070, highly suitable areas will be 14,112.52 km2 and 12972.61 km2. This result indicates that the number of suitable areas for C. africana will increase as climate changes. The findings provide theoretical suggestions for protecting and conserving C. africana, a resource facing challenges due to global climate change.