Virginia's Climate Modeling and Species Vulnerability Assessment

• Austin Kane, Chris Burkett, Scott Klopfer, Jacob Sewall, Ph.D.
• Aug 23, 2013

How Climate Data Can Inform Management and Conservation

Climate change impacts will directly affect Virginia’s wildlife and their habitats as well as exacerbate already existing stressors, and as a result conservation and management goals and strategies will likely need to be reconsidered in light of these changes. To meet this need and provide essential climate information for updating Virginia’s Wildlife Action Plan by 2015 (as required by U.S. Congress), Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries and the National Wildlife Federation began a project with the Conservation Management Institute (CMI) at Virginia Tech to downscale climate data for Virginia and conduct a vulnerability assessment of a selection of species of greatest conservation need (SGCN) from the Action Plan. This report includes a summary of the findings from the modeling effort and assessment as well as highlights management concerns and implications based on the assessment results.