From Suitability Mapping to Resilient Cultivation Planning: A Geospatial Framework for Identifying Climate-Stable Refugia

High-value medicinal plants with narrow ecological tolerances are increasingly threatened by climate warming, yet cultivation planning rarely integrates ecological suitability, climate-model uncertainty, and land-use feasibility within a single spatial framework. Here, we mapped climate-stable cultivation refugia for Panax notoginseng in northern mountainous Vietnam by combining GIS-based fuzzy analytic hierarchy process, non-compensatory ecological constraints, five CMIP6 climate models, two high-emission scenarios, per-cell model–scenario consensus, and land-use exclusion masks. Under baseline climate, highly suitable land covered 7,253.2 km², equivalent to 7.87% of the valid area. By 2041–2070, this highly suitable core declined to 2,327.4 km² under SSP3-7.0 and 1,582.6 km² under SSP5-8.5, indicating substantial warming-driven contraction. Consensus analysis further showed that the robust long-term cultivation zone decreased from 3,364.4 km² under weak agreement to only 126.94 km² under full model–scenario agreement after land-use exclusions. Many remaining stable areas overlapped protected landscapes, revealing a potential cultivation–conservation tension. This study provides a transferable spatial decision framework for identifying climate-stable cultivation refugia and guiding climate-smart medicinal plant development in mountain regions.