Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit, Pacific Northwest CESU

The summary for the Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit, Pacific Northwest CESU grant is detailed below. This summary states who is eligible for the grant, how much grant money will be awarded, current and past deadlines, Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) numbers, and a sampling of similar government grants. Verify the accuracy of the data FederalGrants.com provides by visiting the webpage noted in the Link to Full Announcement section or by contacting the appropriate person listed as the Grant Announcement Contact. If any section is incomplete, please visit the website for the Geological Survey, which is the U.S. government agency offering this grant.

Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit, Pacific Northwest CESU: The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Alaska Science Center (ASC) is offering a funding opportunity to a CESU partner for research to support a comparison of the onshore ecology of polar bears in the southern Beaufort Sea and Baffin Bay subpopulations. Specifically, the objectives are to compare 1) onshore arrival and departure dates of radio-tagged polar bears relative to the timing of sea ice break-up in summer and reformation in fall; 2) movement behavior and activity patterns of bears in both populations and different sex and age classes; and 3) onshore patterns of spatial distribution relative to habitat and landscape covariates, including anthropogenic activity. The southern Beaufort and Baffin Bay subpopulations have experienced sea ice loss leading to an increasing trend of polar bears spending time on land during summer. A comparative analysis of onshore ecology of these two subpopulations can reveal the degree of plasticity present in each subpopulation and elucidate the potential for long-term persistence of polar bears.