Climate Change and Aquatic Environments: Impacts and Adaptation Strategies for Birds

Birds using aquatic environments are highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. More that half of all bird species are expected to be impacted from changing water regimes (e.g. lowering water tables). Increasingly variable water regimes are predicted to cause inland wetlands to dry out thereby disrupting breeding and foraging of many species. Intense precipitation events are expected to scour riverine habitats with associated impacts to avian stream specialists. Sea level rise is causing “coastal squeeze” in estuaries with hardened land-water interfaces which prevent a natural retreat of tidal marshes; loss of marsh habitat for sparrows and rails is the result. Sea level rise is also causing inundation of low-lying islands and elevating rates of coastal erosion—critical threats to nesting birds. Rising temperatures are causing the arctic permafrost to melt resulting in disruption of wetland mosaics throughout the tundra affecting shorebirds and waterfowl. Elevated ocean temperature is impacting circulation patterns and disrupting prey availability for seabirds.

Natural resource managers and scientists play an important role in understanding and responding to these critical issues of species and habitat conservation. Research to characterize climate change impacts and identify habitat management solutions will be essential to shepherding waterbirds, marshbirds and seabirds through decades of global warming and associated changes.

Manomet has played a critical leadership role in the development of waterbird conservation strategies throughout the Americas for nearly 20 years. Manomet's scientists have served on the Waterbird Conservation Council—an international steering body for the Waterbird Conservation for the Americas Initiative (www.waterbirdconservation.org) and were lead authors in the North American Waterbird Conservation Plan. Kathy Parsons and the waterbirds team at Manomet lead implementation of conservation strategies at the regional scale serving partners from Chesapeake Bay to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Manomet's research and solution development for climate change adaptation uses waterbirds as indicators of vulnerable wetland habitats throughout broad landscapes.

For more information about this project please contact:

Katharine Parsons, Ph.D.
Phone: 508-224-6521
Email

This tidal creek provides important marsh habitat for waterbirds, marshbirds, and seabirds.

American Oystercatchers, already declining from threats like coastal development and increasing predation, nest and raise their young on coastal beaches and mudflats, which are exrtremely vulnerable to future impacts of sea level rise.

A great egret, Ardea alba, looks for food in a salt marsh.