Habitat suitability assessment of wild medicinal plant resources in the Changbai Mountain ecosystem of China Using MaxEnt and AHP

Introduction: Plants have been an essential source of Chinese traditional medicine for millennia, and there are more wild medicinal plant resources in Changbai Mountain ecosystem. However, due to multiple factors such as habitat changes, the wild medicinal plant resources are facing disadvantage situations, and their sustainable utilization is being restricted. Methods: In the study, 224 wild medicinal plants were analyzed by analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to make the priority resources for development and utilization. Multi-source species distribution data and bioclimatic variables were utilized to predict the potential habitat suitability of medicinal plant resources and their response to future climate scenarios using Maximum Entropy (MaxEnt). Results: The results showed that under the climate scenario at present, these wild medicinal plants were classified into three classes based on comprehensive assessments, such as Class I (39 species), Class II (49 species), Class III plant resources (136 species), the suitable habitats for Class I was the largest. The prediction accuracy was evaluated by area under curve (AUC), true skill statistic (TSS) and Cohen's kappa statistic (KAPPA), respectively above 0.8, 0.85 and 0.75. Under different climate scenarios in 2090s, the suitable habitats for Class II were increased, with the largest suitable habitats reaching 3.61×10⁴ km² by SSP5-8.5, and the centroid of suitable habitats migrated northwestward and northeastward in Jilin Province, with the maximum displacement reaching 27.24 km by SSP2-4.5. Key climatic variables were identified by the jackknife test within the MaxEnt model as the mean temperature of the coldest quarter (Bio11) and annual precipitation (Bio12). Discussion: Therefore, exploitable potential of Class II plant resources was predicted to surpass Class I in the future. It was a scientific basis for integrated models to promote the sustainable development of natural resources in mountain ecosystems globally.