A Southeast Greenland polar own on glacier, or freshwater, ice at 61 levels north in September 2016 taken all the plot thru NASA’s Oceans Melting Greenland field mission. Credit rating: NASA/Thomas W. Johansen
Greenland’s fjords harbor a uncommon crew of polar bears that depend on glacial ice, a NASA-funded evaluate behold reported on June 16, 2022, in the journal Science.
Polar bears all the plot in which thru the Arctic depend on sea ice as a platform for hunting seals. As climate substitute warms the planet and Arctic sea ice melts away, polar bears are struggling to search out ice to hunt on. In Southeast Greenland, nonetheless, scientists found that bears dwell on for a large selection of of the one year in fjords by relying on ice melanges, a combine of sea ice and items of glacial ice that is carved off of marine-terminating glaciers. This inhabitants of polar bears has been isolated for diverse hundred years from their Arctic counterparts, and so they’ve been found to be genetically optimistic.
Satellite tv for computer monitoring exhibits that the Southeast and Northeast polar own populations are optimistic and own varied behaviors. The tan space exhibits that Northeast Greenland polar bears travel all the plot in which thru extensive sea ice to hunt. The red space exhibits that Southeast Greenland polar bears own extra little movements inner their home fjords or neighboring fjords. Credit rating: NASA’s Earth Observatory
An global team of scientists, including those from the College of Washington and the National Snow Ice and Recordsdata Center (NSIDC), tracked bears in Southeast Greenland for seven years and blended their new details with genetic evaluation and three decades of historical details from Greenland’s entire east fly. They moreover frail the Moderate Resolution Accept as true with Spectroradiometer devices (MODIS) aboard NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites and NSIDC details to document the fjord and offshore sea ice atmosphere.
Their findings printed that the Southeast Greenland bears are chop off from sea ice two-thirds of the one year, and supplement their hunting by the usage of freshwater ice slabs, which routinely smash off from the Greenland Ice Sheet and coastal glaciers. The bears moreover poke between fjords by crossing inland ice and trekking over mountains.
“We knew there had been some bears in the distance from historical details and Indigenous details,” mentioned co-author Kristin Laidre, a polar scientist on the College of Washington. “We factual didn’t know how particular they had been,” she mentioned.
Confirmed here is the Tingmiarmiut fjord inner the habitat of the Southeast Greenland polar own inhabitants, in early spring left. This image used to be quiet by the Operational Land Imager-2 on Landsat 9 on April 6, 2022. Credit rating: NASA’s Earth Observatory
Confirmed here is the Tingmiarmiut fjord inner the habitat of the Southeast Greenland polar own inhabitants, in summer. The white dots on the dark water are floating glacial ice that has damaged off of the central Heimdal glacier and varied glaciers in the fjord, which the bears utilize as an replacement of sea ice to hunt. This image used to be quiet by the Operational Land Imager on Landsat 8 on August 8, 2021. Credit rating: NASA’s Earth Observatory
Southeast Greenland’s sea ice resembles now what researchers request ice stipulations in Northeast Greenland will peek delight in in the gradual 21st century as a result of climate substitute. This shrimp, genetically optimistic crew of polar bears makes utilize of recommendations that will maybe per chance support the species dwell on in a warming world. Nonetheless the authors caution that glacier ice can’t present habitat for a large selection of bears, on story of comparatively few areas tumble tidy portions of glacier ice into the ocean. Polar own numbers will doubtless decrease in the huge majority of the Arctic the set up they depend entirely on sea ice.
This evaluate used to be funded by NASA’s Biological Vary and Ecological Forecasting and Cryospheric Sciences programs, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the manager of Denmark; the manager of Greenland; the College of Washington; the College of Oslo; the Leo Model Foundation and the Vetlesen Foundation.
This collaboration used to be fundamental for supporting the team’s interdisciplinary evaluate, mentioned co-author and NSIDC Deputy Lead Scientist Twila Moon. “We peek these harmful-collaborations as fundamental for addressing many pressing evaluate challenges connected to our with out warning changing world,” she provides.
Reference: “Glacial ice supports a favorable and undocumented polar own subpopulation persisting in gradual 21st-century sea-ice stipulations” by Kristin L. Laidre, Megan A. Supple, Erik W. Born, Eric V. Regehr, Øystein Wiig, Fernando Ugarte, Jon Aars, Rune Dietz, Christian Sonne, Peter Hegelund, Carl Isaksen, Geir B. Akse, Benjamin Cohen, Harry L. Stern, Twila Moon, Christopher Vollmers, Russ Corbett-Detig, David Paetkau and Beth Shapiro, 16 June 2022, Science.
DOI: 10.1126/science.abk2793