While you are living a quiet and stable life in a home that suits your needs, sudden changes may occur that make the stay uncomfortable, and what makes matters worse is your inability to move to an alternative home because a wide natural barrier separates you from it.
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In a similar vein, four species of succulent plants endemic to Saudi Arabia’s “heavenly islands” may face an existential crisis. With climate change, the areas that provide them with suitable conditions for survival could shrink, while geographical isolation prevents them from easily accessing alternative habitats.
The four plants included in the study belong to the genera Aloe (aloe) and Euphorbia, and live in the “heavenly islands” of southwestern Saudi Arabia, which are mountainous highlands that are environmentally isolated from each other, so that they look like islands suspended in the middle of a sea of dry land. These plants live between their peaks and slopes, and are found only in this place.
These highlands are not just topographical features that rise above the surrounding land, but they are characterized by a unique climatic signature in terms of temperature, humidity and rainfall, conditions that allow these plants to survive and develop away from harsh desert environments.
As long as these conditions that helped these plants survive continue, their geographical isolation may provide them with a suitable refuge. But what if the temperature rises, or rainfall patterns change, or the areas that provide suitable conditions shrink? Will these plants be able to move to other heights, or will the mountains that have embraced them turn into islands that are becoming too small for their inhabitants?
This is what Abdul Rahman and his colleagues sought to explore, through modeling the current and future geographical distribution of four types of succulent plants endemic to Saudi Arabia, which were included in the study: two types of Aloe, namely Aloe armatissima and Aloe chadensis, and two types of Euphorbia, namely Euphorbia taifensis and Euphorbia saudiarabica.
To understand the future of these plants, we must first understand where they live, which is the southwestern mountain slope that extends from Taif through Al-Baha and Asir to Jazan, rising from the coastal plain of the Red Sea to more than 3,000 meters at Jabal Al-Soudah.
This mountain range intercepts humid air masses, which helps to create suitable climatic conditions, from rainfall ranging in some locations between 300 and 500 millimeters annually, to more moderate temperatures, with frequent cloud passage over the highlands, conditions that differ from the surrounding desert environment.
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