Project Results

About This Project

A warming climate in the Arctic is having profound impacts on species that rely on snow and ice, like the polar bear and walrus. However, for some snow-associated species, we do not know enough about their ecology to understand or mitigate impacts. My work investigates how wolverines, a species that relies on snow for denning, food caching, and shelter, are impacted by changing snow distribution, and advancing spring melt.

Ask the Scientists

What is the context of this research?

Wolverines have a close relationship with snow. They raise their kits in snow dens, and on the arctic tundra they dig dens for resting sites as well. As the climate warms, spring snow is melting earlier and earlier, and with it goes the service it provides to wolverines.

But what impact does disappearing snow really have on wolverines?

To begin to answer this question, we're conducting a study on Alaska's North Slope, in an area bordering the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, where wolverines dig and use holes in the snow extensively. We're locating sites where wolverines have dug into snow, and measuring snow depth and melt timing at these sites. In addition, we're using GPS telemetry collars on individual wolverines to investigate how snow properties affect their behavior.

What is the significance of this project?

Scientists and managers are concerned that a diminishing spring snowpack could leave wolverines without suitable habitat - enough so that wolverines are now being considered for listing as threatened in the Lower 48 under the Endangered Species Act.

In treeless arctic Alaska, there's very little except snow available to animals for structural protection, so the region presents a perfect location to study the relationship between wolverines and snow. Since snow depth and melt timing could influence how well a site provides protection from predators and harsh weather, it's important to understand the snow characteristics at sites that wolverines choose, and also to investigate how habitat use behaviors are influenced by these snow properties.

What are the goals of the project?

Our goal is to investigate the impacts that changing snow conditions - caused by climate change - have on wolverines in arctic Alaska. To do this, we will capture wolverines starting in February 2018 and fit them with GPS collars. These collars take the animal's location every 40 minutes, and send the positions back to us via email. In addition, we put temperature loggers on the collars. Since the temperature rises abruptly when an animal goes into a snow hole, we can use these combined instruments (location and temperature) to determine where snow holes are, and exactly how long the animal spends inside.

To characterize snow holes used by wolverines, we take snow depth measurements and deploy temperature loggers underneath the snow, which will tell us when the snow melts.