'This is a big deal': BYU research team working to advance polar bear conservation

A Polar Bear and her cubs traverse across ice in Churchill, Canada. Brigham Young University students and researchers last November traded in their usual mountainous terrain for the frozen tundra of Churchill, where they spent six days studying polar bears to assess the feasibility of radar technology in tracking polar bears above ground.

A Polar Bear and her cubs traverse across ice in Churchill, Canada. Brigham Young University students and researchers last November traded in their usual mountainous terrain for the frozen tundra of Churchill, where they spent six days studying polar bears to assess the feasibility of radar technology in tracking polar bears above ground. (Polar Bears International)


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PROVO — Brigham Young University students and researchers last November traded in their usual mountainous terrain for the frozen tundra of Churchill, Canada, where they spent six days studying polar bears.

"If you want to see polar bears, you go to Churchill," said Terri Bateman, a mechanical engineering professor at BYU and capstone coach for the team.

The team's objective was to assess the feasibility of radar technology in tracking polar bears above ground. If it did prove feasible, the team's work would mark a crucial step forward in scientists' ability to track mother polar bears during winter, when they den and give birth to their cubs beneath dense snowpack.

This research is of significant interest as polar bears depend on sea ice for their existence and are directly impacted by climate change, serving as a crucial indicator species.

To conduct this research, the team loaded into a Tundra Buggy — an all-terrain vehicle designed to navigate the arctic tundra — scouring the landscape for polar bears. When they spotted one, they sent its GPS coordinates to a helicopter above.

"Polar bears have become the symbol for climate change, and looking across the board, biologists have put together a chilling tale of the future of these bears," Tom Smith, a wildlife research biologist at BYU, said.

Along with his role at BYU, Smith serves on the advisory board of the capstone team's sponsor, Polar Bears International, a group based in Churchill that is committed to ensuring polar bears' survival in the Arctic.

With coordinates of the polar bears recorded, the capstone team was then able to try out synthetic aperture radar — a new technology to see if it would be useful in identifying bear dens.

"The way the system works is that you would presumably take an image as a baseline when there's no bears present," Smith said.

Typically, traditional infrared radar falls short due to polar bears being so well insulated by the snowpack that makes up their dens, meaning their heat is unable to penetrate the snowpack.

"When you fly over in the winter, when it's covered with snow because the snow is transparent to the radar, then the computer is able to compare the two images and identify new bright spots, which presumably, then, are polar bears," Smith said.

By identifying where polar bears are nesting, the capstone team is aiding in the conservation efforts to protect the vulnerable species.

"These bears are increasingly denning on the Arctic coastline because of a lack of sea ice, unstable ice, thinner ice — all these problems," Smith said. "That's unusual. Most polar bear populations den out on the sea ice, but we're seeing a marked shift away from sea ice denning to the shores."

It turns out, Smith said, that the uptick in polar bears denning on land is coincident with increased pressure for oil reserves that are in the denning locations.

"In order to adhere to the Endangered Species Act, the oil companies are held responsible for not disturbing them; and to do that, you're talking a white bear in a very barren, white landscape — it's very difficult to find them," Smith said. "So this tool will potentially help the oil companies to avoid any sort of disturbances by knowing exactly where they are. ... This is a big deal."

Despite all of the positive groundwork that was laid by the capstone team, Bateman said they can still expand upon the work done in the future.

"What we want to do is go, you know, to other locations where bears are in dens and see if we can find those dens," Bateman said. "We were able to see polar bears on the ground. They weren't in dens, right? So can we see them in their dens? That's the next step."

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Logan Stefanich is a reporter with KSL.com, covering southern Utah communities, education, business and tech news.

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