Abstract
Managed grazing covers constitute more than 25% of the land area globally and may locally be much higher. For example, more than 50% of Sweden is presently grazed by reindeer. In Sweden, as globally, there is a strong need to develop sustainable grazing management regimes. The overall aim of this project is to reveal how present grazing (reindeer) regimes influence the productivity of the pastures, and communicate this information back to the practitioners. At the same time, we will be able to test state-of-the-art theories about stable states in ecological systems. To be able to do this, we will use an interdisciplinary approach with novel methods and an active dialog with practitioners. This includes a novel use of more than 200 years old reindeer pens, and using differences in reindeer densities between of different districts to study the effect of reindeer across the entire Swedish tundra, using new data from national inventories and remote sensing. The specific objectives of the proposed project are: 1. Examine the effect of present reindeer grazing regimes on productivity of summer pastures at large spatial scales, 2. Investigate the importance of vegetation shifts for the effect of reindeer on pasture productivity, 3. Reveal the mechanisms behind positive effects of reindeer on the productivity of forage plants using historical reindeer pens as centuries-long ecological experiments and 4. Communicate the findings to the practitioners and the interested public.
Sweden