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 tiny, golden-eye grebe is a widespread Neotropical species, occurring commonly on ponds and lakes from southern Texas all the way to Argentina. Audubon's climate model projects a 77 percent loss of current winter range by 2080, putting this bird on the move over the next century. The model projects a shift in suitable winter range for this species that echoes that of many other species that may spread north as the planet warms. Currently, only a small portion of the species overall range exists within the model's area of analysis, so it remains to be seen how climate change will affect the ranges of populations further south.
Explore more birds threatened by climate change around the country.
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