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16 CLIMATE CHANGE ALBERTAS BIODIVERSITY SPECIES DISTRIBUTIONS The BMCCA project made extensive use of species distribution modeling page 12 to project the future ranges of species particularly boreal birds and vascular plants under climate change scenarios. Understanding where species are likely to occur in the future is critical to long-term biodiversity management including the management of species at risk and conservation planning. Alberta Birds North American birds have been the subject of intensive studies and researchers have generated a rich dataset of many thousands of geographically referenced observations for North America. For example the Boreal Avian Modelling project has compiled an extensive data set for the North American boreal region.18 The BMCCA project took advantage of this valuable information in several studies of how climate change is likely to impact the distributions of Albertas birds. By the end of the century most of Albertas boreal songbirds are projected to decline in potential abundance in response to climate change and their distributions are projected to shift northward and upslope. Grassland songbirds will have the potential to expand their ranges in Alberta as suitable climate becomes more available. The boreal forest is the Alberta ecosystem projected to suffer the greatest losses in area from climate change page 14. Similarly projections of boreal-breeding songbird abundance by Diana Stralberg and Erin Bayne 2013 indicated declines for 42 boreal- breeding songbird species in Alberta by 2040 48 species by 2070 and 50 species 60 of the species examined by 2100. The distributions of most species were projected to shift northward and upslope. Manyspecieswereprojectedtofirstincrease assuitableclimatespaceexpandsandthen decreaseinAlbertabytheendofthecentury asthesuitableclimatespaceshiftsnorthwards andintotheNorthwestTerritories.19 Coniferous boreal forest species such as Bay-breasted and Tennessee Warblers were projected to shift almost entirely out of the province while deciduous forest-associated species such as Ovenbird and Canada Warbler were generally projected to contract their distributions in the central part of the province and move upslope into the highland regions Fig. 3. There is greater uncertainty in the projections for deciduous forest-associated species because the response of these species to and the persistence of their preferred habitat in future climate scenarios are sensitive to variation among GCM projections for moisture in the boreal region. Deciduous forests have the potential to rapidly convert to grassland if soil moisture is sufficiently reduced. Mountain species such as Varied Thrush and Townsends Warbler were generally projected to move upslope experiencing a range contraction while grassland-associated species like Savannah Sparrow and Clay- colored Sparrow are expected to expand into the current boreal region. The implications of these range shift projections to conservation planning are further explored on page 41. 18 The Boreal Avian Modelling Project httpwww.borealbirds.ca 19 Maps of boreal-wide songbird abundance projections are available at www.biodiversityandclimate.abmi.caresourcesmap-galleries