Possible effects of climate changes on wintering birds in Northern Italy and Northern Iran and the Netherlands

Abstract

In this research, we focus on the effects of climate change on the habitat suitability for the waterbirds. We considered the populations of seven different migratory species in three different places: the Venice lagoon, Mazandaran in the north of Iran, and on the coasts of Netherlands. In the first step, we examine the spatial distribution and the population trends of these birds in the last twenty years to infer which are their ideal living conditions, with respect to bioclimatic variables. Moreover, we assessed the hunting patterns that exploit these species, both under the Italian and Iranian hunting regulations. As the next step, we retrieve database the predictions of climate changes until the year 2100 provided by the MIROC-ES2L for shared socio-economic pathway 5.85. Based on such scenario, we predicted what the spatial distribution of these species will be and how much the possible climate change and global warming would have destructive effects on these waterfowl. we use MaxEnt SDM software to analyze the data and compare the population and distribution of these species in the last twenty years along with the likely distribution that can be achieved in the next 80 years in different time-steps. We use the driving factors which are a set of climatic and bioclimatic variables. The final purpose of this work is to investigate the possible effects of climate change on wintering birds which rely on the wetlands under study until the year 2100, also considering the consequences on hunting patterns.