Assessing the vulnerability of species or ecosystems to climate change and formulating appropriate management responses requires predictions of the exposure and sensitivity of the species or ecosystems to projected changes. This collaborative effort by the Sonoran Joint Venture, Desert Landscape Conservation Cooperative, and Point Reyes Bird Observatory will develop a foundation for monitoring environmental change in the desert southwest by identifying where and what to monitor in order to evaluate climate-change impacts.
Climate change will not have the same effects in all locations of the southwest. Some areas will change quickly (hotspots) and others will change slowly (refugia). Identifying both types of areas and monitoring the rate at which they are changing will be important. Extending models we have already developed for California and that are in development for the SJV we will identify the locations where we predict the greatest changes in climate, habitats, and bird communities. The spatial extent of the project will include Bird Conservation Regions 34, 35, 36 and the results for all of AZ, NM and TX. Large portions of Bird Conservation Region 34 are already being modeled through an ongoing project with the SJV and the proposed project will benefit from the time and effort PRBO and partners have spent compiling environmental and avian occurrence data as well as developing our initial models. The work will leverage large investments made by PRBO and partners of the California Avian Data Center to apply existing cyber infrastructure and modeling approaches to this region.
