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High-resolution satellite imagery has documented the existence of 61 Emperor penguin colonies in Antarctica, increasing the known number of colonies in the region by 20 percent.
The findings, published yesterday (August 4) in Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation, relied on streaks of the penguins’ rusty red guano captured in images of sea ice taken from space. While the bump in numbers is welcome news to conservationists, the findings come with the caveat that these new colonies, and indeed the species itself, are susceptible to climate change.
“The [new colonies] are an exciting discovery,” Peter Fretwell, a geospatial analyst with the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) who led the research, tells The Guardian. “Whilst this is good news, the colonies are small,” meaning they only increase the global population by 5–10 percent, amounting to roughly 278,500 breeding pairs worldwide.
These smaller colonies, consisting of a few hundred ...
