Modeling a future for polar bears: Dr. Louise Archer

Originally from Ireland, Dr. Louise Archer is now based in Canada as a Polar Bears International postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto Scarborough. Here, she talks with us about her background and her work with PBI.  

Let's start with your background: How does someone from Ireland find herself in the Arctic studying polar bears?  

I was always obsessed with animals as a kid, and I studied zoology for my undergraduate degree in Cork, Ireland, with a focus on marine biology.   

I became increasingly fascinated with how ecologists use modeling and data to better understand and predict how ecosystems respond to climate and habitat changes, so I went on to study quantitative biology — which, basically, is biology that uses mathematics and statistics — at a postgrad level.   

Around the same time, a fieldwork stint in Iceland got me interested in cold places, and particularly in Arctic and Subarctic ecosystems. Following my PhD, I took up a postdoc position at the University of Toronto in 2021, and I focused on applying these skills to model how polar bear populations respond to sea ice loss from climate change. This is important in terms of understanding the challenges polar bears face in a warming Arctic and to motivate action to provide them with the protections they need.  

For me, polar bears are a truly fascinating species to research. As a wide-ranging marine mammal that lives primarily on the sea ice, they are difficult or sometimes even impossible to study directly for most of the year. Part of the challenge I enjoy is trying to learn as much as we can from each piece of data.   

Can you explain for us what your research specialty entails?  

Broadly speaking, my work focuses on understanding how species — from individual animals to entire populations and communities — respond to environmental change. I’ve looked at this through field studies and laboratory-based research, but in recent years, I’ve really honed in on using ecological modeling to answer these questions.     

My work on polar bears has focused mainly on modeling polar bear energetics. This might seem a bit obscure, but is quite a straightforward concept: Animals need to take in energy through feeding, which in turn gives them calories to move, grow, produce offspring, and keep cells and tissues healthy. 

Like other animals, polar bears have energy requirements. In their case, they need to take in vast amounts of energy to fuel their impressive bulk, but their ability to hunt is being compromised by declines in the sea ice habitat where they catch seals, their primary food. Reductions in hunting habitat mean fewer seals and less energy — or, if you prefer, fewer calories — coming in, and ultimately less energy available for bears to spend on reproduction and to sustain themselves. By modeling this process of “calories in, calories out,” we can better understand how the polar bears’ health, reproduction and survival are affected by sea ice loss from climate change, now and into the future.   

How has Polar Bears International supported your postdoc work?  

My first involvement in polar bear research was a postdoc position at the University of Toronto working alongside Professor Péter Molnár, a position that was supported by PBI. Since then, I’ve moved into a three-year research fellowship position with PBI, made possible by the support of Opus Technology. I've also been lucky enough to join PBI over the years for their outreach efforts in Churchill, Manitoba, and in Svalbard, Norway. 

What does your work with Polar Bears International entail?  

I’m particularly excited about a new project in which we’re applying energetic modeling to understand how polar bears will likely fare in three populations where declining sea ice is forcing more polar bears on shore for longer periods, but where they experience quite different conditions when on land.  

In Alaska’s Southern Beaufort Sea population, for example, polar bears on land have access to the remains of whales that are harvested by local communities; in the Chukchi Sea population, which ranges between Russia and the U.S., walrus haulouts may offer some limited scavenging opportunities; but in Canada’s Western Hudson Bay, there is little for that population to eat besides vegetation. Polar bears in all three regions are expected to spend longer and longer stretches on land in the future, so addressing these differences in feeding behavior on land should give us good insight into how the populations will fare.   

I’ve also been contributing to PBI’s long-term maternal den study in Svalbard, Norway, which is helping us understand the needs of polar bear moms and cubs during the sensitive denning period. I’ve been analyzing data from earlier years and, this year, joined the team in the field to deploy remote cameras that allow us to study the behavior of mothers and cubs as they emerge from the den.   

Added to that, I also really enjoy sharing our research work with the public, whether through talks, school presentations, podcasts, popular science articles — or interviews like this!  

Do you have any tips for people wanting to enter this field?  

I think finding your niche and figuring out what you can bring to the field is a really important step. For example, conservation (and scientific research in general) needs people with a variety of skills and from different backgrounds: good communicators; people who are good with data and logistics or excel at fieldwork; and, in the case of polar bear conservation, folks who enjoy being outdoors in cold and harsh places! There are lots of different skills that would be valuable in this line of work, so identifying what you like and are interested in and then trying to develop these skills further is a good start. It’s also really useful to get experience in a related area; if you have the chance to get involved in any local or community-based wildlife or environmental projects, that could be a good way to start dipping a toe in research. Or if you’re already studying biology, looking for opportunities to do a summer research placement is also a really good entry point.