USAP-DC

The emperor penguin is an iconic seabird that is found in colonies distributed around the entirety of the Antarctic coastline. Emperor penguins are an important indicator species for the health of the Southern Ocean because their reliance on sea ice for major parts of their life cycle means that their population can be influenced by changes in the extent and duration of sea ice around Antarctica. Although baseline data exists on emperor penguin distributions and overall population size, data on how population size varies at individual colonies is limited to only a few locations. Thus, knowledge about how changes in local or regional environmental conditions impacts local or global population status is poorly understood. By combining established methods in satellite remote sensing with ground and aerial surveys of several colonies across the continent, this project will generate population estimates for the 54 known emperor penguin colonies. Decadal scale population trend data will be combined with environmental variables (e.g., sea ice extent and duration among others) to reveal which conditions influence population fluctuations at regional and continental scales. The project will engage with international collaborators, train post-doctoral associates and future scientists, and develop citizen science and K-12 outreach programs. This project on emperor penguin populations will quantify penguin presence/absence, and colony size and trajectory, across the entire Antarctic continent using high-resolution satellite imagery. For a subset of the colonies, population estimates derived from high-resolution satellite images will be compared with those determined by aerial surveys. This validated information will be used to determine population estimates for all emperor penguin colonies through iterations of supervised classification and maximum likelihood calculations on the high-resolution imagery. The effect of spatial, geophysical, and environmental variables on population size and decadal-scale trends will be assessed using generalized linear models. This research will result in a first ever empirical result for emperor penguin population trends and habitat suitability, and will leverage currently-funded NSF infrastructure and hosting sites to publish results in near-real time to the public. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

Person	Role
LaRue, Michelle	Investigator and contact
Ito, Emi	Co-Investigator
Jenouvrier, Stephanie	Co-Investigator

Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems	Award # 1744989
Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems	Award # 1744794

USAP-1744989_1

Deployment	Type
B343M	airborne survey

None in the Database

Repository	Title (link)	Format(s)	Status
USAP-DC	Detecting climate signals in populations: case of emperor penguin	Not Provided	exists
USAP-DC	Landfast ice: a major driver of reproductive success in a polar seabird	Not Provided	exists
Github	Emperor penguin population trends (2009-2018)	None	exists

1. Jenouvrier S., Iles D., Labrousse S., Landrum L., Garnier J., Caswell H., Barbraud C., Weimerskirch H., LaRue M., Ji R., Holland M. (2020). The Paris Agreement objectives might halt future declines of emperor penguins. Global Change Biology, 26: 1170-1184 (doi:10.1111/gcb.14864)
2. Labrousse S., Fraser A., Sumner M., Le Manach F., Sauser C., Horstmann I., Devane E., Delord K., Jenouvrier S., † and Christophe B†. (2021). Landfast ice: a major driver of reproductive success in a polar seabird. Biology Letter, 7: 20210097 (doi:10.1098/rsbl.2021.0097)
3. Labrousse, S., Fraser, A. D., Sumner, M., Tamura, T., Pinaud, D., Wienecke, B., … Jenouvrier, S. (2019). Dynamic Fine‐Scale Sea Icescape Shapes Adult Emperor Penguin Foraging Habitat in East Antarctica. Geophysical Research Letters, 46(20), 11206–11218. (doi:10.1029/2019gl084347)
4. Jenouvrier S., Long M., Coste C.F.D, Holland M., Gamelon M., Yoccoz N.G., Sæther B-E. Detecting climate signals in populations across life histories. Global Change Biology. (doi:10.1111/gcb.16041)
5. Pacoureau N., Delord. K, Jenouvrier S. and Barbraud C. 2019. Demographic and population responses of an apex predator to climate and its prey: a long‐term study of south polar skuas. Ecological Monographs, 89: e01388. (doi:10.1002/ecm.1388)
6. Jenouvrier S., Che-Castaldo J., Wolf S., Holland M., Labrousse S., LaRue M., Wienecke B., Fretwell P., Barbraud C., Greenwald N., Stroeve J., Trathan P.N. 2021. The call of the emperor penguin: legal responses to species threatened by climate change. Global Change Biology, 27: 5008-5029. (doi:10.1111/gcb.15806.)
7. Trathan, P. N., Wienecke, B., Barbraud, C., Jenouvrier, S., Kooyman, G., Le Bohec, C.,Fretwell, P. T. (2020). The emperor penguin - Vulnerable to projected rates of warming and sea ice loss. Biological Conservation, 241, 108216. (doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2019.108216)
8. LaRue, M., Iles, D., Labrousse, S., Fretwell, P., Ortega, D., Devane, E., Horstmann, I., Viollat, L., Foster-Dyer, R., Le Bohec, C., Zitterbart, D., Houstin, A., Richter, S., Winterl, A., Wienecke, B., Salas, L., Nixon, M., Barbraud, C., Kooyman, G., … Jenouvrier, S. (2024). Advances in remote sensing of emperor penguins: first multi-year time series documenting trends in the global population. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 291(2018). (doi:10.1098/rspb.2023.2067)