Are polar bear habitat resource selection functions developed from 1985–1995 data still useful?
1. Greenhouse‐gas‐induced warming in the Arctic has caused declines in sea ice extent and changed its composition, raising concerns by all circumpolar nations for polar bear conservation. 2. Negative impacts have been observed in three well‐studied polar bear subpopulations. Most subpopulations, how...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:6686286 2023-05-15T15:02:11+02:00 Are polar bear habitat resource selection functions developed from 1985–1995 data still useful? Durner, George M. Douglas, David C. Atwood, Todd C. 2019-07-04 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6686286/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31410267 https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.5401 en eng John Wiley and Sons Inc. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6686286/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31410267 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.5401 Published 2019. This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the USA. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. PDM CC-BY Original Research Text 2019 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.5401 2019-08-18T00:48:13Z 1. Greenhouse‐gas‐induced warming in the Arctic has caused declines in sea ice extent and changed its composition, raising concerns by all circumpolar nations for polar bear conservation. 2. Negative impacts have been observed in three well‐studied polar bear subpopulations. Most subpopulations, however, receive little or no direct monitoring, hence, resource selection functions (RSF) may provide a useful proxy of polar bear distributions. However, the efficacy of RSFs constructed from past data, that is, reference RSFs, may be degraded under contemporary conditions, especially in a rapidly changing environment. 3. We assessed published Arctic‐wide reference RSFs using tracking data from adult female polar bears captured in the Beaufort Sea. We compared telemetry‐derived seasonal distributions of polar bears to RSF‐defined optimal sea ice habitat during the period of RSF model development, 1985–1995, and two subsequent periods with diminished sea ice: 1996–2006 and 2007–2016. From these comparisons, we assessed the applicability of the reference RSFs for contemporary polar bear conservation. 4. In the two decades following the 1985–1995 reference period, use and availability of optimal habitat by polar bears declined during the ice melt, ice minimum, and ice growth seasons. During the ice maximum season (i.e., winter), polar bears used the best habitat available, which changed relatively little across the three decades of study. During the ice melt, ice minimum, and ice growth seasons, optimal habitat in areas used by polar bears decreased and was displaced north and east of the Alaska Beaufort Sea coast. As optimal habitat diminished in these seasons, polar bears expanded their range and occupied greater areas of suboptimal habitat. 5. Synthesis and applications: Sea ice declines due to climate change continue to challenge polar bears and their conservation. The distribution of Southern Beaufort Sea polar bears remained similar during the ice maximum season, so the reference RSFs developed from data collected ... Text Arctic Beaufort Sea Climate change Sea ice Alaska PubMed Central (PMC) Arctic Ecology and Evolution 9 15 8625 8638 |
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Original Research Durner, George M. Douglas, David C. Atwood, Todd C. Are polar bear habitat resource selection functions developed from 1985–1995 data still useful? |
topic_facet |
Original Research |
description |
1. Greenhouse‐gas‐induced warming in the Arctic has caused declines in sea ice extent and changed its composition, raising concerns by all circumpolar nations for polar bear conservation. 2. Negative impacts have been observed in three well‐studied polar bear subpopulations. Most subpopulations, however, receive little or no direct monitoring, hence, resource selection functions (RSF) may provide a useful proxy of polar bear distributions. However, the efficacy of RSFs constructed from past data, that is, reference RSFs, may be degraded under contemporary conditions, especially in a rapidly changing environment. 3. We assessed published Arctic‐wide reference RSFs using tracking data from adult female polar bears captured in the Beaufort Sea. We compared telemetry‐derived seasonal distributions of polar bears to RSF‐defined optimal sea ice habitat during the period of RSF model development, 1985–1995, and two subsequent periods with diminished sea ice: 1996–2006 and 2007–2016. From these comparisons, we assessed the applicability of the reference RSFs for contemporary polar bear conservation. 4. In the two decades following the 1985–1995 reference period, use and availability of optimal habitat by polar bears declined during the ice melt, ice minimum, and ice growth seasons. During the ice maximum season (i.e., winter), polar bears used the best habitat available, which changed relatively little across the three decades of study. During the ice melt, ice minimum, and ice growth seasons, optimal habitat in areas used by polar bears decreased and was displaced north and east of the Alaska Beaufort Sea coast. As optimal habitat diminished in these seasons, polar bears expanded their range and occupied greater areas of suboptimal habitat. 5. Synthesis and applications: Sea ice declines due to climate change continue to challenge polar bears and their conservation. The distribution of Southern Beaufort Sea polar bears remained similar during the ice maximum season, so the reference RSFs developed from data collected ... |
format |
Text |
author |
Durner, George M. Douglas, David C. Atwood, Todd C. |
author_facet |
Durner, George M. Douglas, David C. Atwood, Todd C. |
author_sort |
Durner, George M. |
title |
Are polar bear habitat resource selection functions developed from 1985–1995 data still useful? |
title_short |
Are polar bear habitat resource selection functions developed from 1985–1995 data still useful? |
title_full |
Are polar bear habitat resource selection functions developed from 1985–1995 data still useful? |
title_fullStr |
Are polar bear habitat resource selection functions developed from 1985–1995 data still useful? |
title_full_unstemmed |
Are polar bear habitat resource selection functions developed from 1985–1995 data still useful? |
title_sort |
are polar bear habitat resource selection functions developed from 1985–1995 data still useful? |
publisher |
John Wiley and Sons Inc. |
publishDate |
2019 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6686286/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31410267 https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.5401 |
geographic |
Arctic |
geographic_facet |
Arctic |
genre |
Arctic Beaufort Sea Climate change Sea ice Alaska |
genre_facet |
Arctic Beaufort Sea Climate change Sea ice Alaska |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6686286/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31410267 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.5401 |
op_rights |
Published 2019. This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the USA. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
op_rightsnorm |
PDM CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.5401 |
container_title |
Ecology and Evolution |
container_volume |
9 |
container_issue |
15 |
container_start_page |
8625 |
op_container_end_page |
8638 |
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1766334166798958592 |