Forecasting Changes in Avian Biodiversity Under Changing Climate

Infrastructure development projects, including renewable energy projects, can negatively affect migratory birds, especially as development occurs at the same time that climate change is shifting bird distributions, populations, and abundances. The US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) enacts regulations to minimize harm to wild bird populations and identifies low-risk areas for development. Since current low-risk areas for migratory birds may become higher-risk in future climates, decision-makers need detailed information about bird population sizes and their movements throughout the year, both now and in the future.

This project aims to identify areas in the Northeastern United States that are currently important to bird populations and areas that will become important under future climate and land-use scenarios. Despite limited formal monitoring data for many species of regulatory and conservation interest, the number of bird observations recorded by citizen scientists on eBird continues to grow exponentially. This collaborative, interdisciplinary research team will create a framework to make better use of eBird data to help the USFWS make decisions to minimize long-term negative impacts of development and climate change on bird populations. This framework will incorporate information across species’ full annual life cycles rather than only a single season (e.g., breeding).

Results from this project include high-resolution visualizations of species-specific distributions that highlight low-risk areas for infrastructure development. The team will publish protocols and methods so other agencies and institutions can adapt them to meet their own specific information needs. This study will help the USFWS make science-based decisions to monitor and minimize risk to birds posed by the combined impacts of infrastructure development and climate change.