have been funding has now found a new use: finding penguin poop.

Why would people want to find penguin poop, you might ask?  Because it comes from penguins-- emperor penguins to be exact, the cute little guys from March of the Penguins.
 
Landsat ETM technology is being used to find the distinctive brown stain of penguin "faecal matter" on the ice of Antarctica, where colonies of emperor penguins spend their time from May through December each year, according to a paper published in the May 2009 Global Ecology and Biogeography.

Scientists have apparently been concerned that climate change and global warming may be affecting the world's emperor penguin population because of shrinking ice. Scientists predict the Antarctic ice to shrink by one-third by century's end, potentially threatening the birds.

However, since Antarctica is so large, one and a half times the size of the United States, it has been hard to keep count or even track where colonies of emperors might be located.

British Antarctic Survey member and author Peter Fretwell told CNN that the colonies stay fairly stationary for months at a time. While satellites can't pick up the birds themselves, he said, the brown stain is obvious, and the task of locating the penguins becomes much easier.

Since the project began, Fretwell says in his article, the group has identified 38 colonies of penguins, ten of them new.  "In one synoptic survey we locate extant emperor penguin colonies, a species previously poorly mapped due to its unique breeding habits, and provide a vital geographical resource for future studies of an iconic species believed to be vulnerable to future climate change."