Animals and plants do not experience global climate change so much as they experience changes in the weather where they live. More frequent and more intense heat waves are a near certainty as our climate warms. Aridland birds are very sensitive to hot temperatures, as they are primarily active during daylight hours and are prone to dehydration and overheating because of their high metabolic rates and small body sizes. In this project, we use remote sensing, GIS, and temperature sensors to characterize maximum surface and near-surface temperatures since the early 2000s in the Southwest US. We then examine the how these observed and modeled temperature extremes affect birds across landscapes using physiological and statistical models and observations.

 

This project also includes the education/outreach component for middle school kids we call Project HEAT.

People: Albright, Sadoti, Jacobs, Mutiibwa, Waller

Key collaborators: Jacque Ewing Taylor & Kerry Howard (UNR/Raggio Research Center for STEM Education), Blair Wolf (U. New Mexico), Alex Gerson (U-Mass, Amherst), Andrew McKechnie (U. Pretoria), and Anna Pidgeon (UW-Madison),  

Funding: NASA New Investigator in Earth Sciences

Related Publications (* = supervised postdoc or advisee): 

• Albright, TP, D Mutiibwa*, AR Gerson, EK Smith, WA Talbot, JJ O'Neill, AE Mckechnie, BO Wolf, 2017, Mapping evaporative water loss in desert passerines reveals an expanding threat of lethal dehydration, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1613625114.

• Mutiibwa, D*, SJ Vavrus, SA McAfee, TP Albright**, 2015, Recent Spatio-temporal patterns in Temperature Extremes across Conterminous United States. J of Geophys. Res. - Atmospheres, 120(15), 7378-7392.

• Albright, TP, AM Pidgeon, CD Rittenhouse, MK Clayton, CH Flather, PD Culbert, & VC Radeloff, 2011, Heat waves measured with MODIS land surface temperature data predict changes in avian community structure, Remote Sensing of Environment, 115(1)245-254, doi:10.1016/j.rse.2010.08.024.        

• Howard, KL*, J Ewing-Taylor, TP Albright*, in press, Inspiring student-driven observations:  Measuring the surprising complexity of environmental temperatures using low-cost sensors, NSTA Science Scope.

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Media (selected): 

• Forbes, “Extreme Heat Threatens Desert Songbirds With Death By Dehydration”, 28 Feb 2017 

• National Audubon Society, “In a Hotter World, Desert Birds Will Face a Much Higher Risk of Dehydration”, 13 Feb 2017

• Science News, “Desert songbirds increasingly at risk of dehydration”, 13 Feb 2017

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