How Climate Change Will Affect Animal Migration, in One Map

Cartographer Dan Majka uses stunning animation to visualize the impact of climate change on the migration patterns of animals across the Americas.

“Migrations in Motion,” a stunning new map from cartographer Dan Majka for the Nature Conservancy, uses data visualization to demonstrate the dramatic migrations of thousands of species moving to new habitats to avoid the heat of growing climate change, The Atlantic‘s CityLab reports.

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As Linda Poon reports for CityLab, nearly 3,000 species in the Western Hemisphere alone will have to find new habitats with more favorable climate conditions by the end of this century. Majka’s dramatic new animation outlines how species will move from their current habitats to new ones while also avoiding natural and manmade barriers. In Migrations in Motion, pink lines represent mammal migrations, blue represent birds, and yellow represent amphibians.

The map illustrates the findings of a 2013 study  that looked at climate models and data on the human impact on the landscape to project the movement of nearly 3,000 vertebrate species across North and South America.

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