Climate Change has affected biological systems already Walther et al. Nature 2002

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Climate Change has affected biological
systems already Walther et al. Nature 2002
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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

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Why study Climate Change Impacts in Finland
benefits?

• 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

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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

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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 (ECAD)
• 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

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Bird data

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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)

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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

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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)

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North Atlantic Oscillation NAO index

• 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

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Arctic oscillation
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Pacific decadal oscillation
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Temperature variation North of 60 N
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Spatial, periodical andseasonal variability of CC
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Impacts on vegetationNDVI, normalized difference
vegetation index
The Normalized Difference Vegetation Index
(NDVI), which is related to the proportion of
photosynthetically absorbed radiation, is
calculated from atmospherically corrected
reflectances from the visible and near infrared
AVHRR channels (from http//daac.gsfc.nasa.gov/C
AMPAIGN_DOCS/LAND_BIO/ndvi.html)
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NDVI, Palearctic regions
little change Finland
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What has happened in the recent past is key to
understand future?

• Past measurements allow predictions of future,
  provided that interactions within the system are
  not changing
• Several models predict Climate Warming - best of
  them predict regional variability in changes
• models tested by fitting them with the most
  recent climate change period

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Predictions of five models of future change in Ta
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Regional and seasonal predictions for the next 90
years
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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

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Our projects 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

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Projects recent activities publications/manuscri
pts/drafts

• 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
• 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.
• Rainio, K., Lehikoinen, A., Vähätalo, A. and
  Lehikoinen, E. () Second NAO paper (untitled)
  to be submitted in November-December 2003
• 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)
• 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).
• 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?)
• 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

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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

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Timing of migration what to measure?
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Some possible biases minor and major

• 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 414600, 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

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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 NAOs
• 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

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Temperature has always affected arrival of birds
Leches Data 1749-1763
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Meta-analysis of arrival responses
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Dependence of departure dates on temperature are
less well understood and more variable
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Variation of moult start Willow Warbler

• Sexed individuals, n845, RSQ 34.8
• Source DF Type IV SS F
  Value Pr gt F
• YEAR 29 7840.7403656
  4.62 0.0001
• AREA 1 854.2635848
  14.59 0.0001
• YEARAREA 10 1183.0473934
  2.02 0.0288
• SEX 1 1991.9488772
  34.02 0.0001
• YEARSEX 25 2407.4581812
  1.64 0.0250
• AREASEX 1 143.2869043
  2.45 0.1182
• YEARAREASEX 7 329.3295331
  0.80 0.5846

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Willow Warbler annual cycle intercorrelations
Moult is delayed if arrival is delayed, but
differently in males and females
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Long term change of clutch size
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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