Future ArcTic Ecosystems (FATE): drivers of diversity and future scenarios from ethnoecology, contemporary ecology and ancient DNA

Informations

Funding country

Norway

Acronym

-

URL

-

Start date

1/1/2019

End date

12/31/2022

Budget

433,083 EUR

Fundings

Abstract

The Arctic is currently experiencing some of the globally most dramatic ecosystem changes due to climate warming and increased anthropogenic pressure, with important implications for biological conservation and its inhabitants. Indigenous Arctic and Subarctic communities, whose livelihoods are closely linked to their environment and who directly depend on the herding and hunting of large herbivores, will have to adapt to the effects of climate warming and vegetation changes. Building relevant scenarios requires understanding the relative roles of climate, herbivory and increased anthropogenic pressures as large-scale drivers as well as on local scales relevant to biological diversity, ecosystem services and local communities. We are part of a comprehensive inter-disciplinary and international study. We are one of several partners focusing on sedimentary ancient DNA, biogeochemistry and other palaeoecological proxies from the lake sediments, whereas other partners mainly focus on contemporary ecological observations and anthropological investigations of indigenous people's knowledge and interpretations. Our study will bring together the perspectives of local communities and scientific data acquisition throughout the project. This will allow us to investigate ecosystem shifts and build scenarios of transformations of biodiversity and ecosystem services that are of immediate relevance to stakeholders. We have analysed lake sediment cores from Svalbard (lake Tenndammen), Kola Peninsula (Lake Imandra), and Northern Norway (Rumpetrollvatnet in Hammerfest og Sierravannet in Alta) for ancient plant DNA. We found DNA of 156 plant taxa in Svalbard, 204 taxa in Kola Peninsula, 104 in Hammerfest and 100 in Alta. In Svalbard, vegetation appeared to be relatively stable during the last 700 years, whereas in Kola Peninsula vegetation history covered much longer period (last 13,300 cal yrs BP) and clearly reflects regional climatic events. Our studies from N Norway show also a rather stable vegetation despite a large increase in reindeer population over the last 1000 years. Together with our international partners, we are in the process of supplementing this with analyses of mammal DNA, to evaluate how fluctuations in reindeer populations have affected the flora. We have also analysed available scientific and grey literature in four languages to built up the database of published literature for the pan-Arctic areas to assess the linkages between possible ecosystemshifts, biological diversity and ecosystem services.