How is climate change affecting polar bears and their population?
Polar bears are on top of the food chain in the Arctic and their main source of food is seals. Actually, its their only source of food. Seals are always sitting on ice rocks, this is also how polar bears get them, but with the global warming the ice is melting. The seal population will be migrating to other places where there is more ice. Seals are great swimmers, but their population is also going to decrease. This will mean polar bears are going to have to swim very far which they aren’t really capable of. Moreover, their population is going to decrease a lot because of the amount of seals that are remaining. Global warming is extremely negative for polar bears. Overall, these are all of the ways the polar bears are going to be affected:
Reduced access to food
Drop in body condition
Lower cub survival rates
Increase in drowning
Increase in cannibalism
Loss of access to denning areas
Obviously ice is the limiting factors because the ice causes the decrease of their population due to the reasons listed above. Considering the carrying capacity of the polar bears I believe it’s creating a curve downward trying to level out the population in response to the amount of food. The polar bears will only find a carrying capacity if the world’s climate change is stopped, otherwise they will likely die out. It is also a possibility that the carrying capacity will be determined by the amount of ice. The less ice, the less animals the ecosystem can hold.