Other Wildlife

Biodiversity is declining worldwide, and this trend could potentially become more severe as climate conditions change. An integral component of proactive adaptive management planning requires forecasts of how changes in climate will affect individual species. This need has been identified my multiple federal agencies, including the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service...

Whitebark pine is a high-elevation, important tree species that provides critical habitat for wildlife and supplies valued ecosystem services. These trees currently face multiple threats, including attack by the mountain pine beetle, which has recently killed whitebark pines over much of the western U.S. Climate is an important factor in these outbreaks, and future warming is expected to...

In response to the potential impacts of climate and land use change to the Nation’s ecosystems, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) launched a series of Rapid Ecoregional Assessments (REAs) in 2010. The REAs are focused on improving our understanding of the current state of ecosystems and how conditions may be impacted by changes in climate, land use, and other stressors. Researchers...

Habitat fragmentation, modification, and loss have been implicated in the decline of many species, including more than 85% of those considered threatened or endangered. Therefore, connectivity, or the ability of organisms to move among habitat patches, is a critical component of landscape health. In addition to influencing the sustainability of wildlife populations and communities...

Climate change is already affecting species in many ways. Because individual species respond to climate change differently, some will be adversely affected by climate change whereas others may benefit. Successfully managing species in a changing climate will require an understanding of which species will be most and least impacted by climate change. Although several approaches have been...

In the Southeast, where rapid human development is increasingly dividing natural areas, habitat fragmentation and loss threaten the health and even genetic viability of wildlife populations, and interrupt migration routes. Climate change is projected to exacerbate fragmentation by further disrupting landscapes. To make matters worse, it is also expected to shift the range of many species...

The objective of this study was to determine why certain stream insects tend to be found in certain temperature ranges. Many federal, state and local agencies use stream insects to monitor the health of freshwater ecosystems. While the temperature ranges for some insects are often inferred from the temperature of the waters where they were collected, this inference is coarse at best and

Coral reefs are some of the most biologically rich and economically valuable ecosystems in the world. They provide food, fishing, and recreation opportunities for millions of people, protect coastlines from storms, and shelter thousands of plant and animal species. However, climate change is contributing to the degradation of coral reefs in two significant ways: warming temperature and...

The loggerhead sea turtle, found in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans, is divided into nine distinct populations—five of which are federally endangered and four of which are federally threatened. Unfortunately, climate change may be putting the species at further risk. Sea-level rise, increased storm frequency, and changes in temperature and humidity could reduce the suitability...

Climate in the southeastern U.S. is predicted to be changing at a slower rate than other parts of North America; however, land use change associated with urbanization is having a significant effect on wildlife populations and habitat availability. We sought to understand the effect of global warming on both beneficial and pest insects of trees. We used urban warming as a proxy for global...

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)...

This project built on an existing regional conservation partnership to use the most recent downscaled climate model projections to forecast the likely impacts of climate change to species and ecosystems in the Lower Mississippi Valley (LMV). The objective of this work was to develop and test ecological and biological models to facilitate regional adaptive management of wildlife resources...