Question:

How will global climate change directly influence migratory waterfowl?
-Justin Hart

Answer:

Global climate change may affect migration patterns. As you might expect, it could lead to ducks wintering and breeding farther north. However, I think the bigger issue is how global climate change will affect breeding and wintering areas. The temperature will not be the key consideration - rather it will be the linked changes in precipitation patterns. Many projections of global change indicate that the prairies will get much drier. That will mean that duck production will decline, since the prairie pothole region is where most ducks are produced in North America. It may get warmer and wetter in the far north of Canada, but that is not an area with rich and highly productive soils, so overall duck production may decline.

Accompanying global warming is a rise in sea levels. Many ducks winter in coastal marshes and estuaries in the US and Central America. Sea level rise will flood some of those marshes, and it is unlikely that the lost marshes will be replaced by wetlands farther inland. This impact will probably be less deleterious for duck population, because the size of the duck population is mostly related to breeding season events.

-Dr. Elizabeth Loos