Wildlife Response to Environmental Arctic Change (WildREACH): Predicting Future Habitats of Arctic Alaska

The Arctic is warming at a rate almost twice the global average, and there is strong scientific consensus that changes in temperature, precipitation, and sea level will impact natural systems.  Low mean annual air and ground temperatures constrain timing of breeding, annual productivity, and habitat structure in the Arctic. Therefore, a warming trend will undoubtedly lead to changes in habitat suitability for a suite of arctic-adapted species. Currently, there are few tools available to assist wildlife managers in predicting the net effect of climate-driven changes on habitat availability and quality. The US Fish and Wildlife Service convened the WildREACH conference in 2008 to identify priority research, modeling, and syntheses needed to advance our understanding of the effects of climate change on birds, fish, and mammals of arctic Alaska. We used a conceptual modeling approach to identify the changes that would most strongly influence habitat suitability, and developed a preliminary list of species that would be sensitive indicators of those hypothesized shifts. Information gaps fell into four major cross-cutting themes: 1) precipitation and hydrology; 2) changes in vegetation community and phenology; 3) changes in invertebrate abundance and phenology, and 4) coastal dynamics. We recommended establishment of hydrologic observatories; development of predictive models coupling permafrost, hydrology, and biological systems; centralized data storage and interpretation; and research and monitoring to measure response of carefully selected species to climate-associated habitat change. Other high-priority modeling efforts would address processes that are currently observable: coastal processes (erosion, storm surge, deposition, vegetation succession), seasonality, shrub advance, fire regime, and thermokarst effects on surface water and drainage.