Place: 4274 Chamberlin Hall (refreshments will be served)
Speaker: Brooke Bateman, UW Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology
Abstract: Species are already coping with climate change by shifting their distributions. The rate at which these shifts are occurring is, however, much faster than faced by species in the past. In an uncertain future, we must be able to recognize and forecast how species distributions have and will continue to change. We used the species distribution modeling algorithm Maxent, occurrences, and annual climate and extreme weather covariates to predict breeding bird distributions for nearly 400 breeding bird species in the U.S. from 1950 through 2100, using 19 GCMs and two rcp scenarios. I will highlight how breeding distributions, in relation to annual climate and extreme weather covariates, have changed over the recent past and what change is forecasted for the future. Given the broad scale nature of climate change and widespread modification of the landscape with agriculture and development, we will need to coordinate and implement efforts at broad spatial scales and across many species.