Seasonal Climate Variation and Caribou Availability: Modeling Sequential Movement Using Satellite-Relocation Data

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  • Nicolson, Craig
    • Other Affiliation: University of Massachusetts Amherst
  • Berman, Matthew
    • Other Affiliation: University of Alaska Anchorage
  • Thor West, Colin
    • Affiliation: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  • Kofinas, Gary P.
    • Other Affiliation: University of Alaska Fairbanks
  • Griffith, Brad
    • Other Affiliation: U.S. Geological Survey Alaska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit
  • Russell, Don
    • Other Affiliation: CircumArtic Rangifer Monitoring and Assessment Network (CARMA)
  • Dugan, Darcy
    • Other Affiliation: Alaska Ocean Observing System
Abstract
  • ABSTRACT. Livelihood systems that depend on mobile resources must constantly adapt to change. For people living in permanent settlements, environmental changes that affect the distribution of a migratory species may reduce the availability of a primary food source, with the potential to destabilize the regional social-ecological system. Food security for Arctic indigenous peoples harvesting barren ground caribou (Rangifer tarandus granti) depends on movement patterns of migratory herds. Quantitative assessments of physical, ecological, and social effects on caribou distribution have proven difficult because of the significant interannual variability in seasonal caribou movement patterns. We developed and evaluated a modeling approach for simulating the distribution of a migratory herd throughout its annual cycle over a multiyear period. Beginning with spatial and temporal scales developed in previous studies of the Porcupine Caribou Herd of Canada and Alaska, we used satellite collar locations to compute and analyze season-by-season probabilities of movement of animals between habitat zones under two alternative weather conditions for each season. We then built a set of transition matrices from these movement probabilities, and simulated the sequence of movements across the landscape as a Markov process driven by externally imposed seasonal weather states. Statistical tests showed that the predicted distributions of caribou were consistent with observed distributions, and significantly correlated with subsistence harvest levels for three user communities. Our approach could be applied to other caribou herds and could be adapted for simulating the distribution of other ungulates and species with similarly large interannual variability in the use of their range.
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  • Article
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  • In Copyright
Journal title
  • Ecology and Society
Journal volume
  • 18
Journal issue
  • 2
Language
  • English
ISSN
  • 1708-3087

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