Winter marks a time of harsh climatic conditions that correspond with resource scarcity, placing energetic and fitness constraints on organisms. Snow and low temperatures are dynamic environmental characteristics of winter landscapes that act as strong selective filters affecting species and communities. However, climate change is disproportionately altering the winter landscape resulting in warmer winters with shorter, more variable snow seasons thus eroding key environmental filters that structure communities. To protect winter communities we must understand how winter conditions structure ecological communities from individual distributions to multiple facets of biodiversity (e.g., functional and phylogenetic diversity).
In collaboration with Drs. Ben Zuckerberg, Volker Radeloff, and Daniel Fink, we are exploring the importance of winter climate and snow cover dynamics as drivers of winter–adapted species distributions and biodiversity across the United States in snow-covered regions. By pairing millions of observations from mammal harvest records and winter bird citizen science programs with remotely sensed snow cover data we are evaluating the importance of snow cover (i.e., duration, variability, and lack of subnivium) for winter species distributions and biodiversity across the United States. Furthermore, using these biodiversity–snow relationships we are evaluating the current U.S. network of protected areas to inform local and regional conservation efforts of gaps in coverage of winter biodiversity. As climate change dramatically alters the winter environment, we hope that our work will address knowledge gaps needed to effectively conserve winter biodiversity.
Project Members: Spencer Keyser
This work is funded by the National Science Foundation (MSB) and NASA.