Abstract
Implementing the governmental decision that Swedish wildlife management should be ecosystem-based and adaptive requires (a) knowledge on direct and indirect impacts of species interactions on ecosystems, and (b) multi-species projection models. Project Objective 1 is to merge two topical research fields - trophic downgrading and changing predator-prey cycles - to test a novel hypothesis: Can trophic downgrading (large carnivore decline) indirectly cause a shift from the 10-year cyclic regime in key medium-sized herbivores and their predators which generally characterise boreal ecosystems, to a 4-year cyclic regime which generally characterise colder tundra ecosystems? We will also test what flow-on effects this shift has on the wildlife community, and how resilient these top-down and cyclic regimes are to bottom-up climate change. Project Objective 2 is to develop multi-species models to project direct and indirect effects on the wildlife community of different future scenarios for climate change, carnivore management and hunting. To reach the objectives, the project will analyse long-term data from Sweden, Finland and Canada, and model potential future effects of change. Scenario and model development will be done in collaboration with stakeholders. The results have implications for biodiversity conservation, sustainable management and delivery of ecosystem services, e.g. hunting, in Sweden and throughout tundra and boreal biome in the Northern Hemisphere.
Sweden