Quantifying Spatial Patterns of Risk to Species from Climate Change

It is well appreciated that some species are going to be winners, and others losers under climate change. However, how such dynamics are going to play out on our continental shelf over the next decades remains highly uncertain. Shifts in the thermal habitat for species will in part dictate future species ranges, with impacts on fishers and communities dependent on fisheries resources. Using bottom trawl survey data from the continental shelf of North America, we estimated realized thermal niches for over 300 species across 9 regions. We then matched these thermal niches with downscaled temperature projections from an ensemble of 13 IPCC-class climate models to identify areas where projected temperatures are expected to put species at risk in the next 40-80 years. While projecting species distributions is associated with high uncertainty due to unaccounted for species interactions, other complex ecosystem effects, and uncertainty in climate forecasts, such projections can be useful as scenarios for informing adaptation policies and management decisions. We provide a case study of how projections of fish distributions under climate change can be used to evaluate the long-term effectiveness of spatial management tools such as no-take marine reserves.