Are polar bear habitat resource selection functions developed from 1985-1995 data still useful?

ABSTRACT: 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.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.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 pol

SUBMITTER: Durner GM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6686286 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature