Emperor penguin populations have been exceedingly difficult to monitor because of their remote locations, and because individuals form breeding colonies on seasonal sea ice fastened to land (known as fast ice) during the dark and cold Antarctic winter.
High resolution imagery advances the ability to monitor decadal changes in emperor penguin populationsEmperor penguin populations have been exceedingly difficult to monitor because of their remote locations, and because individuals form breeding colonies on seasonal sea ice fastened to land during the dark and cold Antarctic winter.
Researchers observed nearly 10% fewer birds in 2018 compared with in 2009, according to a new study that used VHR satellite imagery with 30-60-centimeter ground resolution to examine the entirety of the penguins' range during springtime around the Antarctic coast.
"Although we cannot yet clearly attribute this penguin population trend to any particular mechanism such as climate change, there is an accumulation of evidence that the environment is changing and it does not seem to be an environment where penguins are going to endure," Jenouvrier explained. LaRue said combining satellite images with animal tracking, ground observations and molecular tools will be needed if they want to fully understand mechanisms to describe some of the changes they observe.
"We don't understand the population trend in full, and we need to do more research. However, the fact that we have detected a population trend in such a short data set is really important because it potentially has major implications for the future of the species," said journal article co-author Philip Trathan, an emeritus fellow with the British Antarctic Survey where he previously was head of conservation ecology.
Emperor penguin colonies experienced unprecedented breeding failure in a region of Antarctica where there was total sea ice loss in 2022. The discovery supports predictions that over 90% of emperor ...
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