Historical climate stability and anthropogenic refugia jointly shape the biogeography of old trees in the central part of the Yellow River Basin of China
5 affiliations
- 1Soil Health Laboratory in Shanxi Province, College of Resources and Environment, Shanxi Agricultural University, Taigu, Shanxi 030801, China
- 2Shanxi Technology and Business University, Taiyuan 030000, China
- 3School of Forestry, Shanxi Agricultural University, Taigu 030801, China
- 4School of Environmental & Resource Sciences, Shanxi University, Taiyuan 030031, China; Corresponding author.
- 5School of Environmental & Resource Sciences, Shanxi University, Taiyuan 030031, China
Abstract
Old trees are affected by natural drivers (climate, topography, and soil) and protected by cultural factors (temples, ancestral halls, and legends). However, our knowledge of how the presence and growth status of old trees might be maintained by intertwined climatic, soil, and cultural forces is remains limited. To decouple their relative significance on the spatial presence and maximal growth (diameter at breast height) of the top ten old tree species, we utilized a novel historical baseline (1989 pre-urbanization census) in the central Yellow River Basin, China to eliminating the confounding effects of recent rapid urbanization. We combined four cultural drivers (human footprint, and distances to temples, ancestral halls, and legends) and seven natural drivers (elevation, temperature seasonality, precipitation stability, aridity index, soil pH, soil bulk density, and soil fertility Principal Component Analysis), independently evaluating their effects using Ensemble Species Distribution Models (SDMs) and XGBoost- SHapley additive explanation machine learning. We found that distances to temples and ancestral halls are the important decisive factors for the spatial presence of old trees, exhibiting strict distance-decay thresholds. Specifically, religious sites favored evergreen conifers, with 84.34% of Platycladus orientalis and 62.92% of Pinus tabuliformis populations concentrated within a < 3 km core radius. The presence probability dropped sharply beyond specific cultural boundaries: 0.6 km for P. orientalis , 0.7 km for both Sabina chinensis and Sophora japonica , and 1.2 km for P. tabuliformis and Ulmus pumila . In contrast, the maximal growth of old trees is driven by a dual-refuge mechanism relying heavily on historical climate stability (precipitation stability) and soil micro-environments. Our findings have significant ramifications for conservation: (1) preserving historic structures and old trees in tandem to establish holistic biocultural units; (2) leveraging traditional clan networks as essential community-based conservation sanctuaries; and (3) implementing targeted management strategies that optimize soil physical properties while buffering against climate aridity to ensure precise conservation.
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BibTeX
@article{li2026historical,
title = {{Historical climate stability and anthropogenic refugia jointly shape the biogeography of old trees in the central part of the Yellow River Basin of China}},
author = {Shuai Li and Jiao Li and Houjuan Song and Donggang Guo and Tieliang Shangguan},
journal = {Ecological Indicators},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.1016/j.ecolind.2026.115448},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2026.115448},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Historical climate stability and anthropogenic refugia jointly shape the biogeography of old trees in the central part of the Yellow River Basin of China
AU - Shuai Li
AU - Jiao Li
AU - Houjuan Song
AU - Donggang Guo
AU - Tieliang Shangguan
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/23
JO - Ecological Indicators
DO - 10.1016/j.ecolind.2026.115448
UR - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2026.115448
AB - Old trees are affected by natural drivers (climate, topography, and soil) and protected by cultural factors (temples, ancestral halls, and legends). However, our knowledge of how the presence and growth status of old trees might be maintained by intertwined climatic, soil, and cultural forces is remains limited. To decouple their relative significance on the spatial presence and maximal growth (diameter at breast height) of the top ten old tree species, we utilized a novel historical baseline (1989 pre-urbanization census) in the central Yellow River Basin, China to eliminating the confounding effects of recent rapid urbanization. We combined four cultural drivers (human footprint, and distances to temples, ancestral halls, and legends) and seven natural drivers (elevation, temperature seasonality, precipitation stability, aridity index, soil pH, soil bulk density, and soil fertility Principal Component Analysis), independently evaluating their effects using Ensemble Species Distribution Models (SDMs) and XGBoost- SHapley additive explanation machine learning. We found that distances to temples and ancestral halls are the important decisive factors for the spatial presence of old trees, exhibiting strict distance-decay thresholds. Specifically, religious sites favored evergreen conifers, with 84.34% of Platycladus orientalis and 62.92% of Pinus tabuliformis populations concentrated within a < 3 km core radius. The presence probability dropped sharply beyond specific cultural boundaries: 0.6 km for P. orientalis , 0.7 km for both Sabina chinensis and Sophora japonica , and 1.2 km for P. tabuliformis and Ulmus pumila . In contrast, the maximal growth of old trees is driven by a dual-refuge mechanism relying heavily on historical climate stability (precipitation stability) and soil micro-environments. Our findings have significant ramifications for conservation: (1) preserving historic structures and old trees in tandem to establish holistic biocultural units; (2) leveraging traditional clan networks as essential community-based conservation sanctuaries; and (3) implementing targeted management strategies that optimize soil physical properties while buffering against climate aridity to ensure precise conservation.
SN - 1470-160X
SN - 1872-7034
ER -