Collaborative Research: MRA: Estimating and forecasting nonstationary, multi-scale climate and land-use effects on avian communities

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Birds are declining worldwide, with an estimated loss of three billion individuals in North America alone over the last 50 years. The goal of this project is to examine how two major global change drivers, climate and land-use change, have affected – and will continue to affect – breeding birds across the United States. The research combines bird observations from four nationwide data sources (National Ecological Observatory Network [NEON], eBird, Breeding Bird Survey, and National Park Service Inventory and Monitoring Program) to estimate the historical impacts of climate and land-use change on individual species’ occurrences and biodiversity metrics over the last two decades for hundreds of species within six avian communities: eastern forests, western forests, aridlands, habitat generalists, grasslands, and urban/suburban. Using estimates from the recent past, the project will then forecast bird occurrences and distributions under a range of projected climate and land-use scenarios during the mid-century and end-of-century. Forecasts will be used to identify vulnerable species and bird communities at multiple spatial scales across the United States. Species forecasts will account for multiple sources of uncertainty, which is critical for understanding where conservation efforts could have the greatest impact in the face of ongoing global change. Findings from this work will be available via a web-based tool, which will provide the public and resource managers with detailed information on both vulnerable and resilient bird communities to enhance avian stewardship nationwide. A post-doc and graduate student will be trained in data science and statistical methods. This research focuses on evaluating and forecasting the occurrence dynamics of both individual species and entire ecological communities by quantifying the multi-scale effects of environmental drivers, while simultaneously merging independent data sources, via development of a ‘macrosystems integrated community occupancy model.’ The model will be applied to North American avifauna to examine the effects of several climate and land-use variables on the dynamics of species across biogeographical communities in the continental United States throughout the 21st century. The results will lead to (1) a macroscale understanding of bird species’ distributions and biodiversity metrics during the last two decades; and (2) forecasts of distribution dynamics from local to regional scales across the continental United States under plausible climate and land-use scenarios, allowing for assessments of species and community vulnerabilities to potential global changes. The methodological approaches developed during this project will expand the scope of community-level analyses to encompass macroscale drivers of spatiotemporal biodiversity changes during an era of accelerated species loss.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.