Who defined the so-called Last Ice Area and on what basis?
This term is being loosely used without citation in recent scientific articles. It appears to have been originated in 2013 by the Canadian chapter of the World Wildlife Federation.
The image below overlays that map onto the 13 Sep 2021 AWI map of sea ice concentration. The light blue shows Last Ice that is already open water 50 years ahead of the WWF wildlife-dependent ice protection goal.
The new protected area north of Ellesmere is called Tuvaijuittuq, an Inuit word for 'the place where the ice never melts'. They got that right.
The area north of Greenland is actually in bad shape already being low concentration sea ice in recent years, notably during the Mosaic polar expedition leg. As explained in the previous post, neither the Wandel nor Lincoln seas have any prospects of remaining stably ice covered.
Note the northern boundary on the map below has no predictive significance because it is simply the edge of the Canadian 'exclusive economic zone'.
The second map from Canadian oceans & fisheries is far more realistic. It does not include anything from Greenland and ends at Prince Patrick Island (which should extend further to the eastern tip of Banks Island and go farther north).
Since computer models out to 2050 are so flawed, it makes no sense to reference them. The final image shows the average open water in mid-September over the last ten years. The Last Ice Area can only be a subset of the white core ice area -- already the ice shelves, landfast ice along the CAA coast and peripheral seas can be ruled out as part of any ice refugium.
Technical note: Canada does not use polar stereographic projection in its maps and so re-projection onto polar satellite imagery cannot be not completely accurate.
https://wwf.ca/habitat/arctic/last-ice-area/
https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2021/mpo-dfo/Fs97-6-3408-eng.pdf
S Pfirman 2009. The last Arctic sea ice refuge. Circle 4: pp. 6-8.
https://tinyurl.com/pk63vrcy
Identification of Ecologically and Biologically Significant Areas (EBSAs) in the Canadian Arctic. DFO Can. Sci. Advis. Sec. Sci. Advis. Rep. 2011/055