Posts Tagged «Kristin Laidre»

National Geographic asks PSC’s Kristin Laidre about a new unaffiliated study of the escape response of East Greenland narwhals.

The New York Times reports on a study of narwhals led by Kristin Laidre. She and her team conducted field work collecting recordings to uncover how adept the species navigate their Arctic water habitat with sound.

A new population of polar bears documented on the southeast coast of Greenland use glacier ice to survive despite limited access to sea ice. This small, genetically distinct group of polar bears could be important to the future of the species in a warming world.

Patyk, K.A., C. Duncan, P. Nol, C. Sonne, K. Laidre, M. Obbard, Ø. Wiig, J. Aars, E. Regehr, L.L. Gustafson, and T. Atwood. 2015. Establishing a definition of polar bear (Ursus maritimus) health: A guide to research and management activities. Science of the Total Environment 514:371-378.

Reuters Environment reports on a polar bear study led by Eric Regehr and its findings which were presented by co-author Kristin Laidre at a panel discussion during the America Geophysical Union’s 2016 Fall Meeting. Satellite data documenting sea-ice loss also forecasts declines in polar bear population. Reuters briefly talks to Regehr about the specifics of the global assessment.

Geographical reports on the findings of an extensive study of polar bear populations published in Biology Letters.  Read the online article with remarks from one of PSC’s contributors to the study, Kristin Laidre.

February 14, 2020 – The impact of the climate crisis is becoming more and more obvious to humans and their animal neighbors. But among all species, polar bears might be some of the hardest hit.

UW News produced a video reporting on Kristin Laidre‘s recent study of carcasses of stranded whales as a food source for polar bears during past warm periods in the Arctic. The short clip accompanies the university news source’s article and interview of Kristin and co-authors. 

UW News covers Kristin Laidre‘s recent study of carcasses of stranded whales as a food source for polar bears during past warm periods in the Arctic. The university news source talks with Kristin and her co-authors and provides access to the research paper. 

February 12, 2020 – Polar bears are spending more time on land than they did in the 1990s due to reduced sea ice, new University of Washington-led research shows. Bears in Baffin Bay are getting thinner and adult females are having fewer cubs than when sea ice was more available.

February 4, 2020 – A polar bear’s life seems simple enough: eat seals, mate, and raise cubs. But a recent study shows some subpopulations of polar bears are struggling to complete these essential tasks because of declining concentrations of Arctic sea ice.

Audio clip from Scientific American’s 60-Second Science with Polar Science Center’s Kristin Laidre explaining why she and PSC alumna Twila Moon were so fascinated by their recent Science Magazine results.

Kristin Laidre participated in a panel discussion held at AGU’s 2016 Fall Meeting in San Francisco. She presented population projections for polar bears across the Arctic during the discourse of how satellites observe habitat change and help scientists forecast how species will respond.

BioScience talks to PSC’s Kristin Laidre for their coverage of combining remote sensing with animal tracking. Laidre and a field team of researchers tagged polar bears with telemetry devices, such as GPS collars, to collect data. Read the article to learn how Kristin and PSC’s Harry Stern used the remote-sensing data to study polar bear and sea ice trends. 

Rode, K.D., Fortin-Noreus, J.K., Garshelis, D., Dyck, M., Sahanatien, V., Atwood, T., Belikov, S., Laidre, K.L., Miller, S., Obbard, M.E., Vongraven, D., Ware, J., Wilder, J., 2018. Survey-based assessment of the frequency and potential impacts of recreation on polar bears. Biological Conservation, 227: 121-132. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2018.09.008

Schweiger, A., M. Steele, J. Zhang, G. W. K. Moore, and K. Laidre, Accelerated sea ice loss in the Wandel Sea points to a change in the Arctic’s Last Ice Area, Nature Commun. Earth Environ., 2, 122, doi:10.1038/s43247-021-00197-5, 2021.

Science Daily, the popular science news website, posts coverage of the recently published study of the annual migration of some beluga whales altered by sea ice changes in the Arctic. The study and findings were published in Global Change Biology, authored by Donna HauserKristin Laidre, Harry Stern and Kate Stafford, among others.

September 23, 2020 – New research shows that Kane Basin polar bears are doing better, on average, in recent years than they were in the 1990s. The study, published Sept. 23 in Global Change Biology, finds the bears are healthier as conditions are warming because thinning and shrinking multiyear sea ice is allowing more sunlight to reach the ocean surface, which makes the system more ecologically productive.

Southeast Greenland polar bear tagging by Kristin Laidre, late July-early August 2011.

Stafford, K., S. E. Moore, K. L. Laidre, and M. P. Heide-Jørgensen. 2008. Bowhead whale springtime song offshore West Greenland. J of Acoustical Society of America 124(5): 3315-3323.

Stafford, K., K. L. Laidre, and M. P. Heide-Jørgensen. In Press. First wintertime recording of narwhals in West Greenland. Marine Mammal Science

Stern, H. L. and Laidre, K. L., Sea-ice indicators of polar bear habitat, The Cryosphere, 10, 2027-2041, doi:10.5194/tc-10-2027-2016, 2016.

NPR interviews PSC’s Kristin Laidre on the recent discovery of the narhwals’ unique reaction to stress and why its effects should be quantified.

NOAA released its annual “Arctic Report Card” and Gizmodo presented research findings by Kristin Laidre, among others, to help readers interpret the “grade”.

How has the loss of sea-ice and other effects of climate change impact Inuit communities that rely on polar bears for nutritional, economic, and cultural subsistence? Frontiers in Marine Science, the open-access journal, has published a report where Kristin Laidre and her colleagues examined Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) survey results collected from subsistence polar bear hunters living in East Greenland.

Kristin Laidre led a research team that investigated the importance of glacial habitats using telemetry data from Narwhals which were captured and instrumented with satellite-linked time–depth–temperature recorders in Melville Bay, West Greenland, over numerous years. Read about the findings in Biology Letters.

The Pew Charitable Trust has awarded Kristin Laidre one of their fellowships for marine conservation. Her research will involve the effect of melting sea ice on polar bears and the indigenous communities that rely on them. Read more about it in UW Today. Congratulations, Kristin!

The Arctic passageways have experienced increased commercial traffic due to less sea ice for longer durations. In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, recent PSC postdoc Donna Hauser and co-authors, Kristin Laidre and Harry Stern, show the vulnerability of 80 subpopulations of seven endemic Arctic marine mammal species to vessel traffic across the Northwest Passage and Northern Sea Route during the open-water season. 

Wiig Ø., Heide-Jørgensen M. P., K.L. Laidre, E. Garde, R Reeves. 2012. Geographic variation in cranial morphology of narwhals (Monodon monoceros) from Greenland and the Eastern Canadian Arctic. Polar Biology 35:63-71 DOI 10.1007/s00300-011-1032-z

Wilmers C. C., J. A. Estes, M. Edwards, K. L. Laidre, and B. Konar. In Press. Do trophic cascades affect the storage and flux of atmospheric carbon? An analysis for sea otters and kelp forests. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.

The Alaska Dispatch News reports on the study published in Global Change Biology of beluga whale migration patterns influenced by changes of the annual Arctic freeze-up. PSC authors include Donna HauserKristin Laidre, and Harry Stern. The article also makes a parallel comparison to a study of ice retreat, published in JGR Oceans, co-authored by PSC’s Rebecca Woodgate.

March 08, 2020 – This #InternationalWomensDay join us in celebrating the women whose grit, ingenuity and talent drives us forward in our mission to boldly expand frontiers in air and space. Thank you for pushing boundaries, serving as role models and shaping space, science and discovery every day!

ABOUT PSC