Climate Vulnerability Estimates from Correlative Niche Models for Southeastern U.S. Species: A Tool to Support State Wildlife Action Plan Revisions (2025)

USGS’s Southeast Climate Adaptation Science Center and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville are undertaking research to support southeastern states and partners engaged in the process of preparing revisions of State Wildlife Action Plans (SWAPs). This effort focuses specifically on integration of climate change into SWAPs. This data product provides a collation of estimates of species vulnerability to climate change that have been made using correlative niche models. Other common names synonymous with “correlative niche models” include: species distribution models, ecological niche models, climate envelope models, and MaxEnt models (where MaxEnt is the most popular software package used to generate these models). These models identify shared climate conditions found at sites where a species is known to occur today. The models can be used with future climate projections to predict where climate conditions that a species needs may be found in the future. Resulting predictions allow estimates of whether the climate conditions a species needs are likely to remain stable, become more prevalent, or more scarce in the future. If suitable climate conditions for a species become very scarce in the future, then that species would be considered more vulnerable to climate change than would a species for which climate conditions are predicted to remain suitable over a large geographic area.