Marine Ecology Progress Series
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3354/meps14893
copiedLocal variations in population trends and migration strategies of Brünnich’s guillemots on Svalbard
ABSTRACT:
The conservation status of seabirds is of increasing concern, with climate change identified as one of the main threats. This is especially true for Arctic seabirds, which breed in one of the fastest-warming regions on Earth. On Svalbard, the number of Brünnich’s guillemots Uria lomvia has been declining since the late 1990s, mostly due to deteriorating wintering conditions; this conclusion was based on colonies located in the western and southern part of the archipelago. Here, we used new data from northeast Svalbard to investigate whether this trend holds true for other populations of Brünnich’s guillemots. We found that numbers of guillemots in northeast Svalbard have been increasing in the last decade. These contrasting trends are associated with different migration strategies. Birds from the northeast population winter in the northern Barents Sea, while the vast majority of western and southern Svalbard birds winter between Iceland and Canada. Despite rapid climate change, the northern Barents Sea still seems to provide adequate conditions for wintering seabirds. Our study highlights the need to consider spatial variation in population trends, even at a small spatial scale, when assessing the status of a given species. In the Northeast Atlantic, most Brünnich’s guillemots breed in southeast Svalbard and in the Russian Arctic, where they have been poorly studied. Our study indicates that population trends in these regions cannot be inferred from what is observed in south and west Svalbard. Geographically representative monitoring is necessary to reliably assess the status of Brünnich’s guillemots in this part of the Arctic.
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Sébastien Descamps (Corresponding Author)
- Norwegian Polar Institute, Fram Centre, 9296 Tromsø, Norway
Benjamin Merkel (Co-author)
- Norwegian Polar Institute, Fram Centre, 9296 Tromsø, Norway
Hallvard Strøm (Co-author)
- Norwegian Polar Institute, Fram Centre, 9296 Tromsø, Norway
Handling Editor:
Thierry Boulinier, Montpellier, France
Reviewers:
G. Robertson, F. Ramirez, M. Frederiksen
Acknowledgements:
This study was funded by programmes MOSJ (Environmental Monitoring of Svalbard and Jan Mayen; https://mosj.no/), SEAPOP (http://seapop.no/; Norwegian Research Council grant no. 192141) and SEATRACK (www.seatrack.net). We thank Fridtjof Mehlum and Vidar Bakken, who established the Brünnich’s guillemot monitoring programme in 1986 and 1988; Harald Steen who led the Brünnich’s guillemot programme on Spitsbergen between 2005 and 2010; and all summer field assistants who helped collect data since 1988, in particular Erlend Lorentzen, Malin Johansen, Iñigo López Sarasa, Antonio Vilches, Delphin Ruché, Saga Svavarsdottir, Solveig Føreland, Venke Ivarrud, Sigrid Engen, Fredrik D. Haug and Magnus Irgens for their long-term involvement. We also thank Dr. Caitlin Frankish for English editing.