Modeling current and future distributions of key fodder grasses under climate change in Senegal using biomod2

Climate change and increasing human pressure are among the primary factors shaping the distribution of ecological niches for forage species in rangelands. This study investigates the impact of climate change on both current and future geographic distributions of Zornia glochidiata and Andropogon pseudapricus in Senegal, under two climate models (HadGEM3-GC31-LL and MIROC6) and two greenhouse gas emission scenarios (SSP245 and SSP585), with projections for 2070 and 2100. The analysis covers the entire Senegalese territory, with particular attention to rangelands and protected areas. Key environmental variables influencing the distribution of these two fodder species were identified, and future habitat changes were forecasted using climatic projections. We employed six modeling techniques: artificial neural networks (ANN), generalized boosted models (GBM), generalized linear models (GLM), maximum entropy (MaxEnt), random forest (RF), and surface range envelope (SRE). Among the bioclimatic predictors, precipitation of the wettest quarter (Bio16), annual precipitation (Bio12), isothermality (Bio3), and elevation were the most influential. Random forest showed the highest predictive accuracy, with AUC values exceeding 0.95 for both species. Currently, Z. glochidiata and A. pseudapricus occupy 54.4% and 36.17% of Senegal’s surface area, respectively. However, all future scenarios forecast a substantial loss of suitable habitat for both species. These projected reductions underline their high vulnerability to changing climatic conditions. The results provide crucial insights for the conservation and management of forage resources in Sahelian ecosystems, supporting strategies for ecological resilience and socio-economic sustainability.