Reference Document 5-2
Appendix 5
for other taxa, especially those that are not as well studied (e.g., plants or invertebrates), these current CCVI estimates show that amphibians, mammals, and mussels have the largest proportions of North Carolina’ SGCN vulnerable to climate change; and mammals having the least. For example, more than half of the assessed mussel SGCN in North Carolina are vulnerable to climate change (Figure 18).
Summary of available ecological niche models
In addition to the collation and summary of CCVI estimates, the SE CASC and the University of Tennessee have summarized complementary information on available ecological niche models. For North Carolina, 184 SGCN have been evaluated across 12 academic research studies (Mckenny et al. 2007; Iverson et al. 2008; Matthews et al. 2011; Sutton et al. 2014; Bucklin et al. 2015; Struecker & Milanovich 2017; Pandey & Papeş 2018; Bateman et al. 2020; Lawler et al. 2020; Zellmer et al. 2020; Zhu et al. 2021; Lyon & Papeş 2022). Figure 19 summarizes the combined results for these ecological niche models. Like the CCVI assessments, most niche models to date focus on birds, and based on these assessments, many bird species may experience increases in their climatically suitable landscape within North Carolina or remain stable. However, for the other animal taxa evaluated with niche models to date, there appears to be roughly equal proportions of climatically suitable areas for SGCN decreasing as increasing amphibians being the exception. More assessed amphibian species are projected to experience a large decrease in climatically suitable area than species projected to remain stable.
Comparing CCVI and available ecological niche models results
Comparing the results of the ecological niche models to the CCVI estimates for SGCNs within North Carolina reveals similar trends for taxa that were evaluated using both methods. All taxa within the Southeast will experience some vulnerability (i.e., moderately, highly, extremely vulnerable) and some decreases (i.e., decrease or large decrease). Birds have the greatest number of SGCN with predicted stable or increasing populations across both approaches, partially due to how many more bird SGCN have been evaluated compared to other taxa. But looking beyond birds, results from both CCVI and niche models suggest that amphibian SGCN in North Carolina are projected to have large proportions of their populations vulnerable to climate change. Currently, few species overlap between both the CCVI and ecological niche model datasets, which limits the scope of comparisons. In particular, niche model estimates are not yet available for many aquatic species such as fishes and mussels; which the scientific literature suggests may be some of the most vulnerable to climate change in North Carolina and the Southeast region (Halpern and Kappel 2012; Poff et al. 2012; Ingram et al. 2013). However, the available CCVI for these aquatic taxa suggest that mussels have the greatest number of North Carolina SGCN predicted to be extremely and highly vulnerable to climate change (Figure 18).
Adaptation strategies
Identifying adaptation strategies to address impacts and vulnerability is a step towards climate resiliency. Climate adaptation and mitigation comes in various forms and multiple frameworks have been built to support planning for and implementing climate adaptation. Most climate adaptation frameworks generally include:
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2025 NC Wildlife Action Plan
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