U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Region 2 Grant for Developing Climate Change Impact Detection Tools in Birds and Habitats

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. The project 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 – 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. By extending models that have already developed for California and that are in development for the Sonoran Joint Venture, the awardee will identify the locations where there is predicted the greatest changes in climate, habitats, and bird communities. The spatial extent of the project will include all of AZ, NM and TX. Large portions of BCR 34 are already being modeled through our ongoing project with the Sonoran Joint Venture and the proposed project would benefit from the time and effort PRBO and partners have spent compiling environmental and avian occurrence data as well as developing initial models and tools for the smaller region.
The work will leverage large investments made by PRBO and partners of the California Avian Data Center to apply existing cyberinfrastructure and modeling approaches to this region. A web portal will be developed where users can view predicted distributional changes in bird, habitat, and climate under future climate conditions. Training will also be provided on the use of the final products via one or more webinars, and by participation in associated worshop(s) if those are funded by other sources. The overall goal of this project is to provide a web tool that can be used by managers and in workshops for identifying climate change impacts, identifying adaptation opportunities, and improving capacity for making conservation decisions for wildlife populations and habitats using birds as indicators. Source data will be compiled, documented and curated and the products generated as part of this proposal in the California Avian Data Center, and will make them readily transferable to a future regional node for the Southwest that will encompass the desert southwest and Mexico.

The single-source determination is in accordance with criterion #2 (Continuation) and #4 (Unique Qualifications) under Department of Interior guidance (505 DM 2 at 2.14 B). THERE IS NO FULL ANNOUNCEMENT ASSOCIATED WITH THIS NOTICE.