Forecasting Climate Impacts on Wildlife of the Arid Southwest at Regional and Local Scales Using Downscaled Climate Models

Climate change has emerged as a key environmental concern of the 21st century and a major challenge for land and wildlife managers. Although scientists have made tremendous progress in predicting the impact of climate change on a regional and global scale, drilling down such projections to a locally applicable form has been difficult. A major project of the US Geological Survey's (USGS) Southwest Biological Science Center (SBSC), funded by the USGS National Climate Change and Wildlife Science Center (NCCWSC), drew on the work of an interdisciplinary team of scientists to help close the gap between theory and practical application in the arid southwestern U.S. Climate change in this region is predicted to be extreme, with temperature increases within the next 60 to 90 years of 3.5 to 4 degrees Celsius and decreases in precipitation of 5 to 20 percent. These changes have the potential to profoundly affect plant and animal distributions and population viability. Furthermore, more than 70 percent of the lands in the southwestern U.S. are in public ownership. Managers of public lands and wildlife resources will have a particular need to understand climate-driven shifts in order to adapt management strategies to conserve and sustain habitats and wildlife. This project integrated results from three modules to produce data and tools that conservation managers can use in decision-making. These three modules enable scientists to assess the future prospects of the habitats and species most vulnerable to climate change in the Southwest. This information is vital to managers tasked with prioritizing conservation efforts and adapting strategies to sustain habitats and wildlife. The development of realistic landscape-scale models tailored to those species provides managers with practical, data-informed tools to use in decision-making.