Climate Change and Wildlife

I incorporated the expected consequences of climate change into a continent-scale waterbird (e.g., ducks, swans, geese) migration model to develop expectations for how a warming climate may cause shifts in the spatial and temporal patterns of North American waterbird migration. This model identifies the value of wildlife refuges and migratory stopover sites (areas for foraging and resting) to waterbird conservation, and will inform predictions about those areas that are likely to become more (or less) vital as stopovers as climate change proceeds.

I am currently working to extend this model to include the breeding period and incorporate land-cover and land-use change to inform habitat quality inputs (the relative proportion of foraging and roosting habitat). I am using over 50 years of climate data from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction and continental-scale land-use/land-cover data from the USGS to inform the model. I am relying on telemetry-derived data and eBird records to validate the model (having already identified good concordance between model predictions and observations). Ultimately, we will incorporate these models into the USGS Terria Mapping software, and aim to develop a dashboard for waterbird migration prediction based on real time weather forecasts.

We plan to elaborate the model to incorporate effects of contamination on waterbird migration dynamics (oil, mercury, etc.), and to extend the model to include the Northern Hemisphere as a way to integrate interactions between Asian and North American migratory populations and predict movement of avian diseases.

Read more in Ecological Applications and Waterfowl.