Climate Change has affected biological systems already

Walther et al. Nature 2002

CCIOB or

Climate Change Impacts on Birds

Evidence for impacts – global reviews (you saw one example already)

Funding and organisation of the project Cooperation Climate Change Background Climate Change Scenarios Main questions Our approaches Future

Northern Dimension

• Higher proportion of migratory species

• More clear definition of migration

• Migrants from fewer populations and closer to goal

• More borders of distribution areas

• Stronger expected impacts

• Hence, larger expected effect sizes of responses

• Plenty of data for analysis

Why study Climate Change Impacts in Finland – benefits?

Climate Change Impacts on Birds – funding and staff

Project funded by– Academy of Finland– Maj and Tor Nessling Foundation– Kone Foundation– Period 2001-2004, hopefully longer

Staff– Leader Esa Lehikoinen– Post doc Toni Laaksonen– Postgraduate Kalle Rainio– Postgraduate Markus Ahola– MSc thesis finished Katja Sippola

Sources of CC background data

weather data and scenarios – publicly available from centers of CC research– http://www.met-office.gov.uk/research/hadleycentre/ HADLEY CENTRE

GREAT BRITAIN

– http://www.ipcc.ch/ INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL FOR CLIMATE CHANGE

– http://www.knmi.nl/samenw/eca/htmls/index5.html EUROPEAN CLIMATE ASSESSMENT & DATASET (ECA&D)

and nationally: agreement for scientific cooperation with http://www.fmi.fi FINNISH METEOROLOGICAL INSTITUTE

For public information concerning Climate and its change, look at:– http://www.ilmasto.org/index.htm

Bird data

Response variable group Data type available

Timing of migration Phenological projects 1749- Bird stations 1970-

Timing of breeding Nest card schemes 1941- Timing of moult Moult inquiry 1968- Integrated research of the annual schedule

Changes in population sizes Census programs 1941- Winter Birds Census 1957-

Changes in distributions Atlas projects 1974-1989 earlier and later zoogeographical information

Cooperation

National– Hanko and Jurmo bird stations

Anssi Vähätalo, Aleksi Lehikoinen– Natural History Musem of Helsinki University

Risto A. Väisänen, Juhani Terhivuo, Jari Valkama– Finnish Meteorological Institute

International– Institut für Vogelforschung - Vogelwarte Helgoland/Institute of Avian Research,

Germany Franz Bairlein, Ommo Hüppop

– Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH)/Institute for Terrestrial Ecology (ITE), Great Britain

Tim Sparks– and others (Lithuania, France, Denmark)

Main questions

Confirmation of impacts already connected with Climate Change– quality assurance of data– validity of methods and realism of models used– quantification of changes (degree of response/year, degree of response/°C)

What is the relative role of CC in...– timing changes of the phases of the annual cycle– changes of numbers– changes of distributions

Which other factors contribute– habitat change, other human impacts

How impacts on different traits are intercorrelated– correlations between changes of different events of the annual cycle– indirect impacts on fitness traits: mismatches– community reorganisation

Making predictive models

Climate Background

Global Climate System Oscillations: El Niño (ENSO), AO, NAO, PDO Climate Change:

– including the idea that present day climate is changing due to human impact on Global Climate System

very long term oscillations (Ice Age ”cycles”)

• calculated from the pressure difference between Iceland low and Azorean high (PC I from values of several meteorological stations)

• available back to 1821

• high values – warm and rainy winters in W Europe

North Atlantic Oscillation – NAO index

Temperature variation North of 60 °N

winter spring summer autumn

Fennoscandia

1900-45

1945-65

1966-2001

Spatial, periodical andseasonal variability of CC

Predictions of five models of future change in Ta

60-90 °N

global

Impacts on birds

Changes of – arrival time of migrants ***strong evidence

– departure time of migrants *weak evidence

– of breeding time ** medium evidence

– of breeding performance *weak evidence

– mismatch of food availability and breeding *weak evidence

– overwinter survival in sedentary species *weak evidence

– numbers (increase/decrease) *weak evidence

– distributions: northern and/or southern borders *weak evidence

Our project’s recent activities

Congresses and workshops: – Freising 2000 International Phenology Network

before start of the project

– Cambridge 2002 IPN Impacts on Birds, specialist workshop

– Konstanz 2003 ESF BIRD workshop on Climate Change Impacts

– Chemnitz 2003 EOU meeting, session on climate change impacts on birds

Project’s recent activities: publications/manuscripts/drafts…

1. Lehikoinen, E., Sparks, T.H. and Zalakevicius, M. (in press): Arrival and departure dates In: Møller, A.P., Fiedler, W. & Berthold, P. The Effect of Climatic Change on Birds. Advances in Ecological Research. Academic Press. A Review

2. Anssi V. Vähätalo, Kalle Rainio, Aleksi Lehikoinen and Esa Lehikoinen (in press) Spring arrival of birds depends on the North Atlantic Oscillation. – Journal of Avian Biology 34: 000-000.

3. Rainio, K., Lehikoinen, A., Vähätalo, A. and Lehikoinen, E. () – “Second NAO paper” (untitled) – to be submitted in November-December 2003

4. Markus Ahola, Toni Laaksonen, Katja Sippola, Tapio Eeva and Esa Lehikoinen () Spring phenology of a long-distance migrant bird is driven by spatio-temporally varying climate trends (about to be submitted)

5. Rainio, K., Lehikoinen, E., Terhivuo, J. () Comparison of responses of birds to temperature and NAO during different warming and cooling periods (about to be submitted).

6. T.H. Sparks, F. Bairlein, J. Bojarinova, O. Hüppop, E. Lehikoinen, K. Rainio, L.V. Sokolov & D. Walker (): Examining the total arrival distribution of migratory birds (about to be submitted?)

7. Laaksonen, T., Ahola, M., Eeva, T. and Lehikoinen, E () Long term changes of breeding success in a long-distance migrant.

= short talks by Kalle and Markus in this seminar = a couple of next slides

Lehikoinen, E., Sparks, T. and Zalakevicius, M.(in press):

In: Møller, A.P., Fiedler, W. & Berthold, P. The Effect of Climatic Change on Birds. Advances in Ecological Research. Academic Press

Arrival

and

departure

dates

Timing of migration – what to measure?

Variable Definition Problems Benefits

First arrival/departure

First individual observed in spring/autumn (of transient/passage migrants)

Large random varianceAtypical behaviourData quality tests mostly lacking

Easy to observe, cheap,volume of data

Median arrival/departure

The middle individual arriving in/departing from a closely followed breeding population

Difficult, labour-intensive, requires special study

Closest to fitness consequences

Mean arrival/departure

Average arrival/departure date of all birds followed

As above, but not as easy, because of complex arrival distributions

Close to fitness consequences

Median/Mean migration time

The middle or average date of migration in an intensively studied migration flow

Unknown mixture of passing populations, difficult statistical distributions, problems with mixing breeding populations

Is done in bird stations in standard ways, plenty of data available

minor technical biases (in relation to effect sizes and data resolution)

Calendar effects: leap years vs ordinary years after 29 February, diff. of one day

Vernal Equinox is cycling c.0.8 or 1.5 days/100 years in 400 year cycles (Nature 414:600, 2001)

the next ones can be major observational biases

Bird station seasons have fixed starts and ends

Missing observation days are incorrectly or not at all treated

Observer activity is weather dependent

biological covariates (originate from bird behaviour)

Population size affects timing records

Changes from migrant to resident strategy complicate analysis

Some possible biases: minor and major

Questions concerning independent variables and approaches

Data selection and preparation– Local weather, or weather along the migratory route, spatio-

temporal fit– NAO: winter-NAO, other NAO’s– Weather periods used in analyses– Principles of selecting time periods for analysis– Target species selection

Analyses– Linear regression vs. non-parametric LO(W)ESS vs. time-

series– Autocorrelation problems– Lots of other tricky statistical things

Temperature has always affected arrival of birds –

Leche’s Data 1749-1763

Response type

(unit) Number of time series

Upper 95%

confidence limit Average response

Lower 95%

confidence limit

Trend, FA

(days/year) 590 -0.342 -0.373 -0.403

NAO, FA

(days/unit change of NAO-index) 128 -3.382 -3.959 -4.535

Local temperature, FA

(days/ ºC) 203 -2.472 -2.901 -3.331

Trend, MMT

(days/year) 225 -0.137 -0.100 -0.223

NAO, MMT

(days/unit change of NAO-index) 149 -1.350 -1.636 -1.921

Local temperature, MMT

(days/ ºC) 153 -1.433 -1.761 -2.089

Meta-analysis of arrival responses

Dependence of departure dates on temperature are less well understood and more variable

Variation of moult start – Willow Warbler

Sexed individuals, n=845, RSQ = 34.8%

Source DF Type IV SS F Value Pr > F

YEAR 29* 7840.7403656 4.62 0.0001

AREA 1* 854.2635848 14.59 0.0001

YEAR*AREA 10* 1183.0473934 2.02 0.0288

SEX 1* 1991.9488772 34.02 0.0001

YEAR*SEX 25* 2407.4581812 1.64 0.0250

AREA*SEX 1* 143.2869043 2.45 0.1182

YEAR*AREA*SEX 7 329.3295331 0.80 0.5846

Willow Warbler – annual cycle intercorrelations

y = 0.4135x + 32.966

R

2

= 0.1526

30

32

34

36

38

40

42

44

46

48

50

10 15 20 25 30

Arrival day in May

Sta

rt o

f m

ou

lt (

1.6

= d

ay

1)

Moult is delayed if arrival is delayed, but differently in males and females

y = 0.0689x + 34.755

R2 = 0.0011

y = 0.4181x + 35.378

R2 = 0.077

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

55

10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28

Females

Males

Long term change of clutch size

Clutch size of pied flycatchers

YEAR

1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

Clu

tch

siz

e

5,6

5,8

6,0

6,2

6,4

6,6

6,8

7,0

Standard deviation of the clutch size of pied flycatchers

YEAR

1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

Sta

nd

ard

de

via

tio

n

0,4

0,6

0,8

1,0

1,2

1,4

1,6

Future within our lab / university?

Cooperation between groups studying (also) impacts of Climate Change

Regular seminars on the topic– Article reviews– Regular reports of current status in each separate project

Cooperation in handling background data and predictive models

Impacts of CC on trophic interactions and community structure