Climate change and coastal birds

摘要

The United Kingdom, with its extensive coastline, low-lying land and internationally important waterbird populations, is likely to be much affected by climate change generally and by rising sea-levels in particular. Already climate change has been linked with earlier breeding (Crick & Sparks 1999) and changing breeding distributions of the UK's birds (Thomas & Lennon 1999). The distributions of some of the UK's internationally important overwintering populations of waterbirds are also changing as a result of warmer winters (Austin et ai. 2000, Austin & Rehfisch, in press). If the current Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predictions regarding climate change are correct, coastal birds throughout the world are likely to be considerably affected; this concern led to "die 2002 British Ornithologists' Union Annual Conference on 'Coastal Birds and Climate Change' held in Hull, UK. The Conference was based around a series of themes that included the history of climate change and sea-level rise, the socio-economic factors that may mitigate climate change, predicted changes in coastal geomorpho-logy and in the plant and invertebrate resources that coastal birds depend on, the observed and predicted effects of climate change on birds, and the possible mitigation of any adverse effects within present legal frameworks. Within their areas of particular expertise, the invited speakers reviewed the factors that are likely to change with climate change and how these factors would affect coastal birds. Bringing such information together should help make it possible to develop scenarios of the likely effect of climate change on birds, even though there remain many uncertainties. The research priorities identified as a result of the Conference include workinto trying to lessen these uncertainties.