Predicting climate-change induced distributional shifts in Great Lakes region reptiles

FWS Agreement Number

30181-A-G189

Summary

Climate change is widely recognized as an imminent threat to native flora and fauna but efforts to address this threat are only beginning. As a group, reptiles may be especially subject to the effects of climate change climate change
Climate change includes both global warming driven by human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases and the resulting large-scale shifts in weather patterns. Though there have been previous periods of climatic change, since the mid-20th century humans have had an unprecedented impact on Earth's climate system and caused change on a global scale.

Learn more about climate change – their active season is limited by length of the frost‐free period and successful reproduction requires access to suitable thermal microhabitats during gestation or incubation. Within the Great Lakes region, mean temperature is expected to increase by ca. 2 degrees C and mean rainfall is expected to increase by ca. 0.2 mm per day by 2060. Among Great Lakes region reptiles are seven snakes and five turtles that are of conservation concern and whose distributions are largely restricted to or broadly encompass the region. The objectives of this study are to use the maximum entropy method of ecological niche modeling to:

1. Characterize the association between climatic variables and the current distributions of reptiles of conservation concern in the Great Lakes region
2. Use this information to identify the projected future location of areas of high climatic suitability
3. Prioritize species and associated management, research, and policy actions based on these projections