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.
This handsome, already endangered species breeds only in juniper-oak scrub on Texas’s Edwards Plateau, a region barely discernible on the map in year 2000 only. By 2080, areas with a suitable climate have all but evaporated, with Audubon's climate model showing contraction by a 89 percent and a shift entirely away from the current breeding season range, leaving a very uncertain future for the Golden-cheeked Warbler. If the plant community—junipers in particular—can make the shift along with the climatic conditions, the species may be able to adjust, but the precise soil conditions that permit the warbler’s favored habitat to thrive simply can’t follow the plants. The birds may have to depend on their favored plants withstanding climate change where they already are.
Are the projected range maps different from the range maps in field guides? Find the answer here.
Explore more birds threatened by climate change around the country.
It's easier than you think to make a difference. Become an Audubon member today to help birds facing climate change.
