Climate change and intensifying extreme weather events challenge plant adaptability, making the evaluation of adaptive potential imperative. This study aims to identify climatically stable habitats for Rhododendron dauricum, a nationally protected (Class II) shrub species in China. Species occurrence records were integrated with multiple environmental datasets, and habitat suitability was inferred using a maximum entropy model under current and future climate scenarios. The model outputs indicate that habitat suitability is primarily driven by temperature and moisture, vegetation plays a secondary role, and topographic and soil factors are less influential. Projections show a consistent contraction of suitable habitats, particularly in highly suitable areas, with stronger declines under higher emission scenarios and longer time horizons. Spatial patterns shift from continuous to fragmented distributions, with suitable habitats increasingly concentrated in the northeastern regions and northern mountain ranges. Core areas that remain suitable across scenarios are identified through multi-scenario consistency analysis, representing climatically stable regions. These areas should be prioritized for in situ conservation, while populations maintaining high suitability across scenarios may serve as candidate provenances for ex situ conservation and future landscape deployment. This study elucidates the adaptive potential of R. dauricum under future climate scenarios and identifies key environmental drivers, informing conservation, breeding, and climate-adaptive management.
Hao et al. (Fri,) studied this question.