Abstract:Xinjiang grassland covers a vast area and occupies a prominent position in agriculture and animal husbandry. Locust plague is a great threat to the local economy and ecology. Furthermore, extreme weather in Xinjiang has become more frequent, the task of monitoring and preventing locust plagues is difficult. Based on the data of locusts represented by Italian locust, Siberian locust and Asian migratory locust, we comprehensively considered the environmental factors that had important influence on the different life cycles of locusts, and used eight typical species distribution models of BIOCLIM, DOMAIN, MAHAL, GLM, RF, BRT, SVM, MAXENT, and ensembled models to predict typical locust suitable areas in Xinjiang. The results showed that:(1) different models had differences in the prediction of typical locust suitable areas in Xinjiang, in which DOMAIN was the worst (AUC=0.688, TSS=0.301), and the BRT was the best (AUC=0.920, TSS=0.910). The prediction of the suitable area based on the three ensembled models of the BRT, SVM and MaxEnt was more reliable. (2) The suitable area of typical locusts of different grades in Xinjiang was about 568440 km2, accounting for 36% of the total area of Xinjiang, among which the high adaptable area was 165680 km2. (3) The typical locust breeding areas were mainly concentrated in the Altay and Tacheng areas of northern Xinjian. In addition, they were also distributed in Hami and the edge of oasis in southern Xinjiang. This study may provide support to the Xinjiang grassland authorities in their efforts to monitor and control locusts.
