Potential impacts of climatic change upon geographical distributions of birds

By Brian Huntley, Yvonne C. Collingham, R. Green, G. Hilton, C. Rahbek, S. G. Willis. 2006

261 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Potential climatic changes of the near future have important characteristics that differentiate them from the largest magnitude and most rapid of climatic changes of the Quaternary. These potential climatic changes are thus a cause for considerable concern in terms of their possible impacts upon biodiversity. Birds, in common with other terrestrial organisms, are expected to exhibit one of two general responses to climatic change: they may adapt to the changed conditions without shifting location, or they may show a spatial response, adjusting their geographical distribution in response to the changing climate. The Quaternary geological record provides examples of organisms that responded to the climatic fluctuations of that period in each of these ways, but also indicates that the two are not alternative responses but components of the same overall predominantly spatial response. Species unable to achieve a sufficient response by either or both of these mechanisms will be at risk of extinction; the Quaternary record documents examples of such extinctions. Relationships between the geographical distributions of birds and present climate have been modelled for species breeding in both Europe and Africa. The resulting models have very high goodness-of-fit and provide a basis for assessing the potential impacts of anthropogenic climatic changes upon avian species richness in the two continents. Simulations made for a range of general circulation model projections of late 21st century climate lead to the conclusion that the impacts upon birds are likely to be substantial. The boundaries of many species’ potential geographical distributions are likely to be shifted 1000 km. There is likely to be a general decline in avian species richness, with the mean extent of species’ potential geographical distributions likely to decrease. Species with restricted distributions and specialized species of particular biomes are likely to suffer the greatest impacts. Migrant species are likely to suffer especially large impacts as climatic change alters both their breeding and wintering areas, as well as critical stopover sites, and also potentially increases the distances they must migrate seasonally. Without implementation of new conservation measures, these impacts will be severe and are likely to be exacerbated by land-use change and associated habitat fragmentation. Unless strenuous efforts are made to address the root causes of anthropogenic climatic change, much current effort to conserve biodiversity will be in vain.

Subfields: Ecological Modeling, Ecology, Nature and Landscape Conservation

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Citations in the corpus

Population trends of European common birds are predicted by characteristics of their climatic niche (2010, background): “9 1C (KNMI, 2007) and such temperature changes have affected species distributions and population dynamics (Julliard et al., 2004; Huntley et al., 2006; Lenoir et al., 2008).”
Exploring consensus in 21st century projections of climatically suitable areas for African vertebrates (2011, background): “Both precipitation- and temperature-based variables are important determinants of the distributions of bird species (Huntley et al., 2006) and a variety of other species in Africa (Chown, 2010 and references therein).”
Projected Impacts of Climate and Land-Use Change on the Global Diversity of Birds (2007, background): “Recent studies have highlighted existing and future impacts of human-induced climate change on species persistence [2–4,13,14] and have stressed climate change as a primary concern for the setting of conservation priorities [15,16].”
Interrogating recent range changes in South African birds: confounding signals from land use and climate change present a challenge for attribution (2011, background): “Using BEMs, climate-driven range shifts have been predicted for South African birds (Erasmus et al., 2002; Simmons et al., 2004; Huntley et al., 2006).”
Impact of climate change on migratory birds: community reassembly versus adaptation (2007, background): “Secondly, Huntley et al. (2006) use a ‘closed system’ approach, i.e. species future ranges are modelled only if their range is currently within Europe.”
Potential impacts of climatic change on the breeding and non‐breeding ranges and migration distance of European Sylvia warblers (2009, methodology): “Its non-breeding range includes sub-Saharan Africa as well as Europe and North Africa.”
Assessing the impacts of wind farms on birds (2006, background): “Although it is widely accepted that greenhouse gas emission is the primary cause of anthropogenically driven global climate change (Huntley et al. 2006), and that moving to renewable energy sources will play a vital role in reducing emissions, the unprecedented rate and scale of development of wind…”
The effects of climate change on tropical birds (2012, background): “data on absence as well as presence is preferable (Huntley et al., 2006).”
Impacts of climate on prey abundance account for fluctuations in a population of a northern wader at the southern edge of its range (2010, background): “Species distributions are predicted to shift and contract as a result of climate change (Erasmus et al., 2002; Pearson et al., 2002; Williams et al., 2003; Huntley et al., 2006), potentially leading to the extinction of many species (Thomas et al., 2004).”
The fate of European breeding birds under climate, land‐use and dispersal scenarios (2012, background): “One of their applications has been to predict potential species’ range shifts under various climate change scenarios (Thuiller, 2004; Huntley et al., 2006) and to estimate species turnover and local extinction (Thuiller et al.”
Potential impacts of wave-powered marine renewable energy installations on marine birds (2010, background): “…sources, and although the consequences of such global change are under debate, the evidence is that environmental change can have global-scale impacts on avian biodiversity, population dynamics and phenology (Pounds & Puschendorf 2004, Thomas et al. 2004, Huntley et al. 2006, IPCC 2007).”
Travelling through a warming world: climate change and migratory species. (2009, background): “Thus, it will be important to protect areas that may be used in the future, and to recognise shifts away from currently used sites, as seen for shorebirds wintering in western Europe (Austin & Rehfisch 2005).”