Here is the October 2014 follow-up to my post on the July 2013 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 USGS track map for October 2014 is copied below (Fig. 1).
For the end of October, there was more ice in the Southern Beaufort this year than there has been since 2010.
Eight bears (all females) were on the ice and four were onshore. Only six of the eight on-ice bears were actually in the Southern Beaufort – the other two were in the Chukchi Sea (west of Point Lay, see discussion here).
Note that the recent boundary change between the Southern and Northern Beaufort subpopulations (the US/Canada boundary of the Southern Beaufort), reported here, has not addressed the fact that many western “Southern Beaufort” bears move into the Chukchi Sea. Continue reading
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