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 bird was until fairly recently treated as the same species as the American Golden-Plover. The Pacific, however, is distinctive in various aspects of appearance, behavior, and ecology. It breeds on dry tundra in Alaska and Siberia, a habitat that is undergoing radical changes, and winters widely in the Pacific Ocean region, with small numbers reaching coastal California. Records inland are very rare, but that may change. Audubon's climate model shows areas of suitable climate becoming available in the Central and Imperial valleys of California, and even in the Owens Valley east of the Sierra, though by 2080 there will be no overlap with the current North American winter climate space. If the species colonizes these inland sites, a key question will be water availability in a region already beleaguered by diversion and desertification.
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.
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