Wildlife Refugia NPS
Wildlife Refugia
By Ethan Plunkett
Blackpoll Warbler (Setophaga striata) male perched in a tree. Males of this small songbird species have a prominent black cap, yellow beak, and have black and white striping with some dull brown feathers.
Photo credit: Greg Lasley
Check out Ethan’s research here.
We will develop occupancy models across the NER for each of the priority species with adequate data. We will represent the climate with six variables: mean annual temperature, minimum winter temperature, maximum summer temperature, growing degree days, total annual precipitation and growing season precipitation, each summarized as a 30 year mean centered on either 2010 or 2080 under Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) 4.5 and 8.5. These were derived by the UMass Designing Sustainable Landscapes (DSL) project and the NE CASC (McGarigal et al. 2017). Physiographic layers will be included from Natural Resources Conservation Service soil surveys, The Nature Conservancy’s Resilient and Connected Landscapes maps, and National Elevation Dataset (now part of the National Map) and the Landfire program. Percent canopy cover will come from the USGS 2011 National Land Cover Database (NLCD; Homer et al. 2015).
We will generate model predictions of current probability of occupancy using the best model for each species, and future probability of occupancy using the climate projections for 2080 under RCP 4.5 and 8.5. We will map potential climate change refugia and transition areas, where a species’ habitat suitability is projected to increase outside of its current range, for each priority species at each park unit.
relevant rrc publications
Ackerly et al. 2020. Topoclimates, refugia, and biotic responses to climate change. https://doi.org/10.1002/fee.2204
Ebersole et al. 2020. Managing climate refugia for freshwater fishes under an expanding human footprint. https://doi.org/10.1002/fee.2206
Morelli et al. 2020. Climate‐change refugia: biodiversity in the slow lane. https://doi.org/10.1002/fee.2189
Stralberg, D, Carroll, C, Pedlar, JH, Wilsey, CB, McKenney, DW & Nielsen, SE. 2018. Macrorefugia for North American trees and songbirds: Climatic limiting factors and multi‐scale topographic influences. Global Ecology and Biogeography 27:690-703. https://doi.org/10.1111/geb.12731