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Responses of Black Grouse in the French Alps to Global Warming
Reference
Barnagaud, J.-Y., Crochet, P.A., Magnani, Y., Laurent, A.B., Menoni, E., Novoa, C. and Gimenez, O. 2011. Short-term response to the North Atlantic Oscillation but no long-term effects of climate change on the reproductive success of an alpine bird. Journal of Ornithology 152: 631-641.

What was done
Noting that "deciphering the effects of climatic conditions on population dynamics is of major importance in understanding how organisms are likely to be affected by climate changes," the authors "used broad scale annual censuses of adult and young Black Grouse in the French Alps between 1990 and 2007 to test whether the breeding success of the species is affected by inter-annual climatic variation and long-term climate change," based on "annual counts of Black Grouse hens and chicks carried out by the French Mountain Galliforms Observatory on 58 counting sites," where "counts were performed on the same sites and areas from one year to another, with the same operators."

What was learned
Barnagaud et al. first of all documented that "the Alps are currently undergoing a significant global change in climatic conditions, with warmer temperatures and drier conditions, especially in winter, that reflect particularly well such large scale processes as the NAO [North Atlantic Oscillation]," additionally citing in this regard the work of Beniston et al. (1997), Giorgi et al. (1997) and Beniston (2005, 2006). Then they determined that "the optimal weather conditions for the reproduction of the Black Grouse in the French Alps correspond to average winter NAO values for the last 30 years," which suggests, in their words, that "the species has adapted to more frequent positive NAO anomalies in the last decades, i.e., to a warmer and drier climate."

Noting that "neither the numbers of hens nor the breeding indexes have declined during the last 18 years," they further state that "this result is consistent with recent reports (Storch, 2007) suggesting that the alpoine populations of Black Grouse which declined during most of the twentieth century (Magnani, 1987) have stabilized in the past two decades, despite the climate warming threat." And they add that "this absence of decline agrees with community-level studies showing lower-than-expected effects of climate change on alpine birds (Archaux, 2004)."

What it means
The seven scientists say their results indicate that "Black Grouse have until now been able to track climatic trends towards a warmer and drier climate," and that they "appear to be more threatened by declines in the availability of suitable areas and changes in habitat structure than by direct effects of climate warming on [their] reproduction." Thus, they conclude that their findings demonstrate that "even a highly specialized mountain species can track rapid climate changes without decreasing its productivity, at least within the limits of current climate changes," which, we hasten to add, have routinely been described by climate alarmists as the most dramatic and significant of the past one to two millennia, in terms of both the rate of warming and the level of warmth achieved.

References
Archaux, F. 2004. Breeding upwards when climate is becoming warmer: no bird response in the FrenchAlps. Ibis 146: 138-144.

Beniston, M. 2005. Mountain climates and climatic change: an overview of processes focusing on the European Alps. Pure and Applied Geophysics 162: 1587-1606.

Beniston, M. 2006. Mountain weather and climate: a general overview and a focus on climatic change in the Alps. Hydrobiologia 562: 3-16.

Beniston, M., Diaz, S. and Bradley, R.W. 1997. Climatic change at high elevation sites: an overview. Climatic Change 36: 233-251.

Giorgi, F., Hurrell, J.W. and Marinucci, M.R. 1997. Elevation dependency of the surface climate change signal: a model study. Journal of Climate 10: 288-296.

Magnani, Y. 1987. Reflexions sur la dynamique d'une population de Tetras lyre Tetrao tetrix L. des Alpes francaises. In: Institut d'analyse des systemes biologiques et socio-economiques. Laboratoire de biometrie, Universite Claude Bernard Lyon I, Lyon.

Storch, I. 2007. Grouse: Status Survey and Conservation Action Plan 2006-2010. IUCN, Gland, Switzerland.

Reviewed 31 August 2011