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.
Like many small sandpipers in the genus Calidris, the Dunlin breeds at high latitudes. Unlike most of these sandpipers, though, many Dunlins don’t migrate great distances, with sizable numbers wintering as far north as New England and British Columbia. Audubon's climate model forecasts expansion even farther north in winter—but with some corresponding loss on the wintering grounds in the southern U.S. In the summer, the situation appears precarious, as this high-Arctic breeder may simply be squeezed out by climate change, with a complete shift of summer climate space and concurrent 94% decrease in area by 2080. There just may not be anywhere left for the Dunlin’s preferred habitat of wet coastal grasslands along the shores of the Arctic Ocean.
Explore more birds threatened by climate change around the country.
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