Forest "Islands" offer refuge to birds.

• Position: Land Management

The polar vortex of 2013 and 2014 brought the coldest winter many parts of the Midwest had experienced in decades. In Dane County, Wis., it was the coldest it had been in 35 years. By coincidence, that same winter, University of Wisconsin, Madison, graduate student Christopher Latimer was gathering data in fragments of forests and woodlots throughout the county. He wanted to know whether these forest "islands" created their own unique climates--microclimates--and what that could mean for overwintering birds like the black-capped chickadee.

In a study published in Ecography, Latimer and coauthor Ben Zuckerberg, professor of forest and wildlife ecology, show that these forest refuges may mean the difference between life and death for chickadees and their overwintering songbird kin. "All of our predictions about climate change--from shifting temperatures to altered precipitation--play out over small-scale differences in microclimate, and they can be just as big as global climate," Zuckerberg points out.

For instance, Latimer and Zuckerberg found the microclimate variability was so high within the 30-mile study area--which they call...