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 bulk of the Stilt Sandpiper’s winter range currently lies south of the U.S., but that may be about to change. Audubon’s climate model predicts a 52 percent loss of current winter range, with a broad expansion northward predicted. Although mainly coastal now in the winter months in the U.S., the Stilt Sandpiper may surge inland in the Southeast; portions of Arizona may become available, too. While this prediction may seem in some sense “good” for the Stilt Sandpiper, it is essential to keep in mind that the model does not examine potential changes in the extensive winter range south of the U.S.
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