Event

Four decades of change: a seabird responds to a melting Arctic

Thursday, November 9, 2017 11:30to12:30
Raymond Building R3-045, 21111 Lakeshore Road, St Anne de Bellevue, QC, H9X 3V9, CA

Natural Resource Sciences Seminar Series - Wildlife Biology—featuring a series of external speakers on topics relevant to Wildlife Biology and Environmental Biology.

Guest Speaker: George Divoky (Director, Friends of Cooper Island)

The breeding biology of an Arctic seabird, the Black Guillemot, has been studied annually since 1975 in  northern Alaska where rates of atmospheric and oceanic warming have been among the most pronounced in the world.   The species is adapted to feeding in and next to Arctic sea ice and while it first benefitted from warming, as earlier snowmelt facilitated range expansion and colony growth, reductions in sea ice have decreased colony size and breeding success.  The species' response to cryospheric decreases in the last half century provides biological evidence of the rapid pace of environmental change in the Arctic and demonstrates the importance of long-term studies during a period of climate change. 


This seminar series is open to anyone within the McGill community, but primarily targets NRS grad students and faculty.

 

Back to top