Systematic data collection on the biological component of ecosystems is still in its infancy, especially in harsh environments, in which consistent and repeatable research is particularly hard to achieve.
What this new method accomplishes is to use satellite imagery in conjunction with a phenological and a behavioral model. "Systematic data collection on the biological component of ecosystems is still in its infancy, especially in harsh environments, in which consistent and repeatable research is particularly hard to achieve," Le Bohec said."In the coming years, climate change, fishing and other human interference in emperor penguin's habitat will put the species ability to adapt under harsh pressure.
"Emperor penguins are at the top of the food web.They are a reflection of how lower levels of the marine food web are being impacted," Zitterbart said."This research has the potential to transform the emperor penguin from a hard-to-study species to the canary in a coal mine of the Southern Ocean and act as an early warning system for ecosystem health.