Each map is a visual guide to where a particular bird species may find the climate conditions it needs to survive in the future. We call this the bird’s “climatic range.”
The colors indicate the season in which the bird may find suitable conditions— blue for winter, yellow for summer (breeding), and green for where they overlap (indicating their presence year-round).
The darker the shaded area, the more likely it is the bird species will find suitable climate conditions to survive there.
The outline of the approximate current range for each season remains fixed in each frame, allowing you to compare how the range will expand, contract, or shift in the future.
The first frame of the animation shows where the bird can find a suitable climate today (based on data from 2000). The next three frames predict where this bird’s suitable climate may shift in the future—one frame each for 2020, 2050, and 2080.
You can play or pause the animation with the orange button in the lower left, or select an individual frame to study by clicking on its year.
The Barrow’s Goldeneye is the less common highland-breeding cousin of the Common Goldeneye. Climate change appears likely to push the species up in elevation and out of most of its current summer range: only 3 percent of it is stable, and available area is projected to decrease by 86 percent. Additionally, unlike most other ducks Audubon's climate model predicts that this species’ winter range will contract, and by over one half. Although the species also breeds in Iceland and Greenland, a very large majority of the world’s Barrow’s Goldeneyes live in North America, so this species could be in real trouble.
Explore more birds threatened by climate change around the country.
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