Polar bears in Baffin Bay, between Canada’s Baffin Island and Greenland’s west coast, are skinnier and having fewer cubs as the sea ice they depend on melts, according to a new study.
Polar bears in Baffin Bay, between Canada’s Baffin Island and Greenland’s west coast, are skinnier and having fewer cubs as the sea ice they depend on melts, according to a new study.
Researchers at the University of Washington in the U.S., and others in Canada, Greenland and Norway, compiled the data from a combination of satellite tracking and visual observations, comparing polar bears in the 1990s with their habits and population in more recent years.
For the current population, they found that as sea ice has ebbed, the amount of time polar bears spend on land increased, which curtailed their attempts to find food, stay healthy and reproduce, according to the study published in the journal Ecological Applications.
“We know that sea ice, which is where the bears need to be, is decreasing very rapidly,” Kristin Laidre, a professor and Arctic ecologist at the University of Washington and lead author of the study, said in a statement from NASA’s Earth Observatory. “When there’s no sea ice platform, the bears end up moving onto land with no or minimal access to food. Our research looked at how these changes affect their body condition and reproduction.”
Read more at University of Washington
Image: A polar bear in Baffin Bay, West Greenland in 2012 seen from the air. (Credit: Kristin Laidre/University of Washington)
