Combining the potential resilience of avian communities with climate change scenarios to identify areas of conservation concern

Abstract

Abstract This study aimed to investigate the match between breeding bird communities’ potential resilience and projections of climate change in Europe. Here we identified European regions with the most substantial projected impacts of climate change based on Δ temperature and Δ precipitation in the next 60 years, assessing the overlap with maps of potential bird community resilience. We combined data on the number of species and functional redundancy of avian communities, to calculate an index of potential community resilience. Finally, combining these three layers of information, we obtained unique large-scale evidence of differences in potential conservation threats in the continent. Approximately 3% of the continent could be exposed to a maximum risk of conservation concern (areas characterized by more significant changes in precipitation and temperatures and simultaneously by avian communities with the lower functional redundancy) by 2070, with a 31% exposed to high risks, and 23% of the continent facing potentially moderate risk. Our findings provide important information on the potential capacity of European breeding bird communities to reduce the negative impact of changes in climate (temperature and precipitation), as well as identifying those regions potentially facing higher conservation risks (e.g. Southern part of Western Europe and the Ural Mountains in Russia).