Environmental Response of Tree Species Distribution in Northeast China with the Joint Species Distribution Model

Abstract

The composition, distribution, and growth of native natural forests are important references for the restoration, structural adjustment, and close-to-nature transformation of artificial forests. The joint species distribution model is a powerful tool for analyzing community structure and interspecific relationships. It has been widely used in biogeography, community ecology, and animal ecology, but it has not been extended to natural forest conservation and restoration in China. Therefore, based on the 9th National Forest Inventory data in Jilin Province, combined with environmental factors and functional traits of tree species, this study adopted the joint species distribution model—including a model with all variables (model FULL), a model with environmental factors (model ENV), and a model with spatial factors (model SPACE)—to examine the distribution of multiple tree species. The results show that, in models FULL and ENV, the environmental factors explaining the model variation were ranked as follows, climate > site > soil. The explanatory power was as follows: model FULL (AUC = 0.8325, Tjur R2 = 0.2326) > model ENV (AUC = 0.7664, Tjur R2 = 0.1454) > model SPACE (AUC = 0.7297, Tjur R2 = 0.1346). Tree species niches in model ENV were similar to those in model FULL. Compared to predictive power, we found that the information transmitted by environmental and spatial predictors overlaps, so the choice between model FULL and ENV should be based on the purpose of the model, rather than the difference in predictive ability. Both models can be used to study the adaptive distribution of multiple tree species in northeast China.