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 Horned Grebe nests along the margins of lakes and ponds on the northern Great Plains and in the boreal forest of western Canada and Alaska. The species also occurs in the Old World, where it is called Slavonian Grebe. Still, the Horned Grebe may be in grave danger, as Audubon's climate model projects a 100 percent loss of current summer range by 2080. Even for a migratory species, that kind of loss will be too much to adapt to. Winter presents some potential gains, but it is hard to imagine these coming to fruition with such dramatic decline during the summer. This species winters at sea as well, where climate change is expected to influence other variables, such as the quality and availability of food.
Explore more birds threatened by climate change around the country.
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