Climate change threatens the stability of temperate grassland ecosystems in Inner Mongolia, a core part of the Eurasian Steppe, by driving widespread shifts in plant species distributions. Agropyron cristatum (L.) Gaertn., a dominant native perennial herb in Inner Mongolian steppes, is ecologically vital for degraded grassland restoration and forage supply, but its response to future climate change is unclear. Here, we used an optimized MaxEnt model to assess its potential distribution under current and future climate scenarios. We processed 228 initial occurrence records into 112 valid points, selected 11 non-collinear environmental variables, optimized model parameters with the R package ENMeval, and projected distributions for the 2050s and 2100s under CMIP6 SSP2-4.5 and SSP5-8.5 scenarios, while quantifying habitat fragmentation with landscape metrics. We found that annual mean temperature and annual precipitation dominate A. cristatum distribution (total contribution ~87%), with current highly suitable habitats concentrated in central-eastern Inner Mongolia. Future scenarios show stable core suitable habitats with northward and westward shifts, habitat fragmentation will slightly increase. Our findings clarify the climate response of A. cristatum and support its conservation and adaptive grassland management.
Wang et al. (Mon,) studied this question.