Abstract

Human activity has disturbed natural areas through their various human activities which cause climate change to produce ecological impacts that affect both plant populations and plant chemical makeup. The research studied 28 different medicinal plant species which grow in highland lowland coastal and arid environments through a method that used a nonrandom dataset which included data from field research and GIS sampling and 2050 climate projections. The research evaluated different variables which included latitude longitude altitude current and future mean annual temperature and current and future annual precipitation and abundance index and current and future habitat suitability and active compound concentration. The research used SPSS software version 28 to conduct descriptive statistics and Spearman correlation and paired t-tests and multiple linear regression analysis and one-way ANOVA testing. The current abundance showed its strongest positive relationship with annual precipitation which produced a value of r=0.755 and p<0.001 and the current habitat suitability showed its strongest positive relationship with annual precipitation which produced a value of r=0.707 and p<0.001 and the future habitat suitability showed its strongest positive relationship with annual precipitation which produced a value of r=0.580 and p=0.001 and the active compound concentration showed its strongest positive relationship with annual precipitation which produced a value of r=0.447 and p=0.017. The relationship between mean annual temperature and abundance showed a weak correlation which produced a value of r=0.030 and p=0.879 while the relationship between mean annual temperature and compound concentration showed a weak correlation which produced a value of r=0.270 and p=0.165. Future habitat suitability decreased significantly in comparison to present conditions which showed a t value of 2.278 with 27 degrees of freedom and p value of 0.031 while the mean habitat suitability change showed a value of -0.042 with a standard deviation of 0.097. The abundance regression model identified precipitation as the only important predictor which showed a value of B=0.0176 and t=2.666 and p=0.014 and R²=0.450 while the compound concentration model identified precipitation as a relevant factor which displayed a value of B=0.0126 and t=2.635 and p=0.015 and R²=0.311. The study found that different regions showed major variations in both the number of organisms present and the level of chemical substances present in their habitats (F = 14.177, p < 0.001) and (F = 3.349, p = 0.036). The results demonstrate that hydroclimatic conditions have a greater impact than temperature effects and climate change will lead to unequal distribution of medicinal plant resources which will create significant effects on conservation efforts and sustainable resource management.