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 species can be found nesting in reed beds along the edges of northern lakes below tree line. By 2080, Audubon's climate model predicts its summer climate space will shift dramatically north by over 90 percent. Its winter range is projected to shift significantly, but remain the same size overall. Red-necked Grebes also live in the Old World and therefore those populations are not included in this prediction. Whether the species can make the shift north to new breeding areas, that may or may not have shallow lakes, remains to be seen.
Explore more birds threatened by climate change around the country.
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