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.
Species that depend on steppe habitat—the transition between desert and wetter, taller grassland—are particularly susceptible to changes in climate. Organisms living on the plains can’t simply move up a mountain to follow suitable climate conditions. The result can be the widespread disappearance of an entire ecosystem. That seems to be partly what’s happening here. While the situation isn’t as dire as that of the Sprague’s pipit, the Chestnut-collared Longspur is projected to have almost three-quarters of its current breeding range become climatically incompatible, and suitable areas are projected to decrease by 40 percent as a whole.
Explore more birds threatened by climate change around the country.
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