Effects of environmental variables on seedling distribution of rare and endangered Dacrydium pierrei

Because growth environment is affected by climate change, Dacrydium pierrei resources are becoming less and less. Therefore, understanding the effects of environmental variables on seedling-sapling distributions can help gain insight into changes in population recruitment in the context of climate change. The seedling-saplings distribution and variability of Dacrydium pierrei in environmental variables at Bawangling, Hainan, China, was surveyed over a 3-year period. In addition, laboratory experiments measuring the effects of soil moisture on seedling emergence were conducted to identify seedling development characteristics; principal component analysis (PCA) and Gaussian mixture model (GMM) were used to assess how different factors influenced Dacrydium pierrei seedlings-saplings distribution. The results demonstrated that the influence degree of seedling-sapling distribution is soil temperature>litter thickness>available phosphorus>canopy density>available potassium>nitrate nitrogen; a large number of seedling-saplings occurring at altitudes 1140-1300 m; a GMM trained with a C-2-L-3-H-4-A(5)-I-6 combination yielded an accuracy of 72.23% in simulating seedling-saplings distribution; temperature and precipitation have strong impact on seedling-sapling distribution, with increasing soil moisture, seedling emergence shows a positive relationship. This study focuses more on developing a new method for research on the seedling-sapling distribution of Dacrydium pierrei to get reference for its adaptive management with the intense extreme climate change.