Projecting impacts of anthropogenic climatic change on the bird communities of southern Swedish spruce monocultures: will the species poor get poorer?

The potential impact of climatic change on bird species’ distributions in Europe was recently modeled for several scenarios of projected late 21st century climate. The results indicate mean range shifts of hundreds of kilometres north for many of European bird species. Here we consider the implications from such distributional shifts for the bird communities of Norway spruce (Picea abies) monocultures in southern Sweden, a forest type likely to remain prevalent due to forestry, despite climate change. Our assessment led us to three key findings. First, the monocultures offer suitable habitat to only two bird species projected to extend their breeding distribution northwards into southern Sweden this century. Second, species richness was projected to decline overall, which would accentuate the depauperate nature of these stands. Third, all conifer-associated arboreal granivores and three of four conifer-associated arboreal insectivores were projected not to occur, reducing both the functional richness and functional redundancy. We discuss caveats related to our approach, including the potential for bioclimatic projections – used in this study – to be hampered by the artificial retention of dominant vegetation. We also discuss the implications of our results for avian biodiversity in what is today the most prevalent forest type in southern Sweden and in many other regions of Europe.