Projected Future Bioclimate-Envelope Suitability for Species of Concern in South Central USA
Dates
End Date
2016-10-31
Summary
This dataset addresses the question of how future shifts in the climate and land use patterns of the South Central United States are likely to affect the distributions of important species and habitat crucial to the conservation of wildlife. It also addresses the integration of knowledge on climate change effects into management strategies and policy by enhancing the functionality of decision support systems (DSS; i.e., CHATs). CHATs are being designed for states across the western U.S. to facilitate landscape-scale conservation, project planning, and climate adaptation and are intended for use by decision-makers at all levels of government. Climate change, and its effects on individual species and biological communities, has become [...]
Summary
This dataset addresses the question of how future shifts in the climate and land use patterns of the South Central United States are likely to affect the distributions of important species and habitat crucial to the conservation of wildlife. It also addresses the integration of knowledge on climate change effects into management strategies and policy by enhancing the functionality of decision support systems (DSS; i.e., CHATs). CHATs are being designed for states across the western U.S. to facilitate landscape-scale conservation, project planning, and climate adaptation and are intended for use by decision-makers at all levels of government. Climate change, and its effects on individual species and biological communities, has become a critical issue requiring that we identify areas that are the most important to protect in the face of impending environmental change. These issues are especially important in the South Central U.S. where dramatic changes in both average and extreme temperatures and precipitation patterns are expected. We selected 20 focal species according to several criteria, including their expected sensitivity to climatic change, and developed bioclimate-envelope models using species occurrence datasets. Climate datasets projected according to IPCC emissions scenarios are used to assess the potential future distributions of these focal species and of large unfragmented areas, respectively. Maps of alternative future distributions of species and unfragmented areas for comparison to present day crucial habitat are to be incorporated into the publicly accessible web-based viewer for the New Mexico (NM) state-level CHAT.
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Purpose
The primary objective for this project was to assess the impact that varying climate and land use change scenarios for the South Central US (New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas) will have on the distribution of key species and unfragmented habitat in this region. This includes developing models of present day and potential future distributions of suitable environmental conditions for 20 terrestrial vertebrate species. The results of these assessments of alternative future scenarios for the South Central US will be integrated into the New Mexico Crucial Habitat Assessment Tool (NM CHAT). The NM CHAT is one of the decision support tools developed by the Western Governor’s Wildlife Council, wildlife management agencies, and other partners in states across the western US. This will include evaluation of the role that uncertainty regarding the effects of climate change on suitable environmental conditions for wildlife have in these tools. In particular, variation associated with 1) different General Circulation Models (GCMs) projected according to multiple greenhouse gas emission scenarios and downscaled using different algorithms and historical datasets, and 2) different statistical techniques for modeling suitable environmental conditions for species are considered.
