Productivity effects in reindeer from changes in human land use

Informations

Funding country

Norway

Acronym

-

URL

-

Start date

1/1/2016

End date

12/31/2022

Budget

1,013,520 EUR

Fundings

Abstract

Habitat fragmentation and loss of biodiversity due to human land-area pressure is internationally recognized as a main threat to the earth's ecosystems and their ability to supply ecosystem services. Faced with such major changes, there is an urgent need of methods for mapping and monitoring of how ecosystems services are impacted by these changes. Moreover, these new methods must be implemented in research protocols that facilitate upscaling of ecological processes so that they can be readily used by management authorities to promote sustainable land use in the future. We focus on how habitat use and productivity of wild and semi-domesticated reindeer in Norway are affected by cumulative effects including, habitat fragmentation, altered disturbance regimes, and increased large carnivore populations. Our methodological framework ensures that results of ecological process studied in detail in a selected set of reindeer populations can be readily used to predict consequences of altered land use on a nation-wide scale. The work will contribute with overall risk assessments and outline efficient mitigation strategies for a socio-ecological system that is highly valued nationally. The methods developed during this project will be highly relevant in terms of linking land-area pressure and land management with the habitat use and productivity of herbivore populations throughout the Arctic biome. A main goal in the project has been to have a GIS-database for all areas with reindeer in Norway that include environmental variables including infrastructure in a way that is relevant for reindeer. In 2017 the first habitat suitability models for reindeer across study herds were analysed. These models were presented to reindeer herders during a workshop in spring 2018. The conclusion from the subsequent discussions was that model predictions were in line with the traditional ecological knowledge of the reindeer herders for the summer pastures. However, for the winter pastures model predictions deviated more from the herders knowledge. The problems with the models varied between reindeer districts, but were due to 1) more intensive herding on winter pastures, 2) different types of cabins and peoples use of these were poorly represented in the database, 3) the vegetation map used in the habitat use analyses in some cases didn't capture important winter pastures, in particular in forested areas, 4) snow conditions were poorly represented in the models. We have extended the collaboration with John Fryxells group at University of Guelph, Canada, with a ph.d. student (Rebecca Viejou) whom have collected data on the quality of food plants from reindeer pastures, where such knowledge is poor in the literature. Viejou will defend her phd thesis in 2021. Covid-19 resulted in important meetings with reindeer herders involved in the project being delayed repeatedly in 2020. At the same time the analysis work has continued and at the end of 2020 we have estimates of the spatial scale of impact from a wide range of infrastructure on reindeer habitat use, and how this differ between wild and semi-domesticated reindeer.