A Study of Climate Change and the Effect on Bird Biodiversity in the Midwest and Great Plains

Abstract

Climate change is one of the most political current events that involve every being on Earth. Climate change is an accepted explanation by scientists to be the cause of many earth-alternating phenomena, and can be seen and tested over time by monitoring these phenomena. The temperature increase allows birds to migrate to the United States and an increase in insect populations allow them to survive in areas that the carrying capacity used to be lower. To test what is affecting the amount of species entering the Midwest and Great Plains the change in the variables of agricultural land, pesticide treated acres, natural habitat, and temperature from the 1960s and today was compared. No factor was shown to have a significant effect on the amount of bird species but that is because only 30% of the change was tested for. There were correlations between certain variables but nothing on how much that affects the species counts. There can be many research topics that come from this study based on climate change and birds.