Climate change threatens the distribution of major woody species and ecosystem services provision in southern Africa

Species occurrence points used in this study to investigate the effect of climate change on the distribution of eight tree species in 18 countries in southern Africa, covering 36% of the continent. We proposed a loser/winner ranking of the species based on the changes in climatic suitability within their historical distributions as well as future gains and losses of suitable areas. We interpreted these findings in terms of changes in the provision of key ES (timber, food, energy, and medicine), and identified hotspots of ES provision decline. We used species presence data from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, climatic data from the AfriClim dataset, and the MaXent algorithm to project the changes in species' land suitability.