Bede-Fazekas Ákos, Török Péter, Erdős László
Institute of Ecology and Botany, HUN-REN Centre for Ecological Research, Alkotmány u. 2-4., 2163, Vácrátót, Hungary.
Department of Environmental and Landscape Geography, Faculty of Science, Eötvös Loránd University, Pázmány Péter sétány 1/C., 1117, Budapest, Hungary.
Sci Rep. 2023 Oct 13;13(1):17379. doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-44221-4.
Eurasian forest-steppes form a 9000-km-long transitional zone between temperate forests and steppes, featuring a complex mosaic of herbaceous and woody habitats. Due to its heterogeneity regarding climate, topography and vegetation, the forest-steppe zone has been divided into several regions. However, a continental-scale empirical delineation of the zone and its regions was missing until recently. Finally, a map has been proposed by Erdős et al. based on floristic composition, physiognomy, relief, and climate. By conducting predictive distribution modeling and hierarchical clustering, here we compared this expert delineation with the solely macroclimate-based predictions and clusters. By assessing the discrepancies, we located the areas where refinement of the delineation or the inclusion of non-macroclimatic predictors should be considered. Also, we identified the most important variables for predicting the existence of the Eurasian forest-steppe zone and its regions. The predicted probability of forest-steppe occurrence showed a very high agreement with the expert delineation. The previous delineation of the West Siberia region was confirmed by our results, while that of the Inner Asia region was the one least confirmed by the macroclimate-based model predictions. The appropriate delineation of the Southeast Europe region from the East Europe region should be refined by further research, and splitting the Far East region into a southern and northern subregion should also be considered. The main macroclimatic predictors of the potential distribution of the zone and its regions were potential evapotranspiration (zone and regions), annual mean temperature (regions), precipitation of driest quarter (regions) and precipitation of warmest quarter (zone), but the importance of climatic variables for prediction showed great variability among the fitted predictive distribution models.
欧亚森林草原形成了一个长达9000公里的温带森林与草原之间的过渡带，其特征是草本和木本栖息地的复杂镶嵌。由于其在气候、地形和植被方面的异质性，森林草原带被划分为几个区域。然而，直到最近才缺失该地带及其区域的大陆尺度实证划分。最后，厄尔多斯等人基于植物区系组成、外貌、地形和气候提出了一幅地图。通过进行预测分布建模和层次聚类，我们在此将这种专家划分与仅基于宏观气候的预测和聚类进行了比较。通过评估差异，我们确定了应考虑细化划分或纳入非宏观气候预测因子的区域。此外，我们还确定了预测欧亚森林草原带及其区域存在的最重要变量。森林草原出现的预测概率与专家划分显示出非常高的一致性。我们的结果证实了此前对西西伯利亚地区的划分，而基于宏观气候模型预测对中亚地区的划分证实程度最低。应通过进一步研究来细化东南欧地区与东欧地区的适当划分，同时也应考虑将远东地区划分为南部和北部子区域。该地带及其区域潜在分布的主要宏观气候预测因子是潜在蒸散（地带和区域）、年平均温度（区域）、最干季度降水量（区域）和最暖季度降水量（地带），但在拟合的预测分布模型中，气候变量对预测的重要性表现出很大差异。
