Daily Archives: December 5, 2013

Tracking polar bears in the Beaufort Sea: November map

Here is the November follow-up to my post on the July track map for female polar bears being followed by satellite in the Beaufort Sea by the US Geological Survey (USGS) – Ten out of ten polar bears being tracked this summer in the Beaufort Sea are on the ice.

See that post for methods and other background on this topic, and some track maps from 2012 (also available at the USGS website here).

The track map for November is copied below (Figure 1).

By the end of November, ice covered the entire Alaska coast. Six of the bears that were being tracked in October were still present (down from ten in July) and one bear that went Arctic walkabout in October has returned. So, a total of seven bears were tracked in November.
Continue reading