The paper, to appear Sept. 14 in The Cryosphere, is the first to quantify the sea ice changes in each polar
bear subpopulation across the entire Arctic region using metrics that are specifically relevant to polar bear biology.
Using data collected from adult females in 11
subpopulations of polar
bears across the Arctic, Regehr and Laidre's team calculated the generation length for polar
bears — the average age of reproducing adult females — to be 11.5 years.