Rapid ongoing climate change presents new challenges to natural resource managers. Effects are usually at large landscape scales and management actions must account for future uncertainty, often based solely on locally available data. Because birds are known to be indicators of ecosystem health and function and are cost effective to survey at multiple scales, they can provide early warnings of broader changes that may accompany climate change and other landscape-scale level environmental stressors. Unfortunately, infrastructure and coordinated efforts devoted to monitoring environmental change to support management are currently lacking throughout the western US and northern Mexico.

The Sonoran Joint Venture and Point Blue Conservation Science have developed models of projected climate change impacts on birds to identify areas of potential vulnerability in the southwestern U.S. and northern Mexico. We are now in the next phase of this project: the creation of a bilingual, online web portal and tool where users can view and download projected distributional changes in birds, habitat, and climate under several global circulation models. The web portal can be used by managers to help identify climate change impacts, prioritize monitoring and adaptation opportunities, and improve the capacity for making conservation decisions under climate and other change.

A fundamental component of our efforts is the establishment of a community of science practitioners (ecologists, managers, educators, citizen scientists, etc.), openly sharing data and information about birds and ecosystem conservation. In order to provide timely information and solutions for the proper stewardship of birds and their habitats in the context of change, this community must be enabled to quickly document and report on changes, underlying causes, and potential conservation actions. This is the model behind the creation of the Avian Knowledge Network (AKN), which Point Blue helped develop and is now leading. The Sonoran Joint Venture and Point Blue are working together to establish a node of the AKN for the region.

In order to build this community, we will be offering a half-day workshop as part of the XII CECAM in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas. The workshop has two main objectives. First, we will demonstrate the developing bilingual web portal and model results to gather input and feedback on ease of use and desired functionality of the visualization tools. Second, we will facilitate a discussion about the best way to move forward with coordinated monitoring across the region, with a goal of identifying where, what, and how to monitor to evaluate climate change impacts in northern Mexico and the southwestern U.S., as well as how to best manage the data.

The workshop will take place on Wednesday, October 16, 2013, from 11am-3pm. Those with expertise in climate change and wildlife monitoring are invited to participate. Space is limited, so if you would like to participate please send an email indicating your interest and experience to SJV Education and Outreach Coordinator Jennie Duberstein by October 5, 2013. We will send more details about the specific location of the workshop closer to the date. The complete scientific program for the congress is available here.