The objective of the project CC-Bio is to predict potential effects of climate change on the distribution and abundance of a large range of plant and animal species from Quebec. CC-Bio supports regional strategies of adaptation to climate change in the field of biodiversity conservation. We use the best available data and the most advanced statistical techniques to develop quantitative models representing the complex relationships between species distributions and environmental variables, including climate. We are working in three steps:

1. We evaluate how phenology (the timing of biological events) and species distributions have been affected by recent climate change;
2. We construct ecological niche models for a wide array of plant and animal species including trees, other vascular plants, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and some mammals. These models are based on the climate and land cover that presently define the distribution of species, and use high resolution scenarios of regional climate change to project future species-by-species distribution changes;
3. Based on the output from the first and second steps, we zoom in on the species and regions within Quebec that are expected to be most heavily impacted by climate change, to develop regional strategies of biodiversity conservation that incorporate potential climatic threats.

The CC-bio project is the first Ouranos project in the field of biodiversity and ecosystems. CC-Bio has received a Strategic grant from NSERC and is administred at Université du Québec à Rimouski, Quebec, Canada.

Last update: 2015-01-19