Mapping the potential habitat suitability, and opportunities of bush encroacher species in Southern Africa: a case study of the SteamBioAfrica project.

Senegalia mellifera (Benth) Seigler & Ebinger. , Dichrostachys cinerea (L.) Wight & Arn. and Terminalia sericea Burch. Ex DC., are three important bush encroacher species that contribute to the well-known ecological process named "thicketization" in Southern Africa. This issue has persisted for many years, impacting species distribution, plant communities, soil, and fauna dynamics. According to climate change projections, Southern Africa is expected to become drier and warmer in future scenarios, creating favourable conditions for proliferation of bush encroacher species.

In the paper, we analyze the habitat suitability of these bush encroachers through MaxEnt 3.4.4 under three different future climate models and scenarios. Future projections were made using the shared socio-economic pathways (SSPs) for greenhouse gas concentrations, specifically SSP245-585 across two-time horizons: 2041-2060 and 2061-2180. We utilized WorldClim 1-km resolution climate data from three global Earth System Models (ESMs) from the sixth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) that obtained better results than CMIP5 models (Bouramdane 2022; Mmame and Ngongondo 2024): the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology Earth System Model (MPI-ESM1.2-HR), the Hadley Climate Center Earth System Model (UK-ESM1.0-LL) and the Institute Model for Numerical Mathematics (INM-CM5-0).