Impacts of climate warming on reindeer herding require new land-use strategies
- Author:
- Rosqvist G.C., Inga N. & Eriksson P.
- Year:
- 2022
- Journal:
- Ambio
- Pages:
- 51: 1247–1262
- Url:
- https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-021-01655-2
Climate in the Arctic has warmed at a more
rapid pace than the global average over the past few
decades leading to weather, snow, and ice situations
previously unencountered. Reindeer herding is one of the
primary livelihoods for Indigenous peoples throughout the
Arctic. To understand how the new climate state forces
societal adaptation, including new management strategies
and needs for preserved, interconnected, undisturbed
grazing areas, we coupled changes in temperature,
precipitation, and snow depth recorded by automatic
weather stations to herder observations of reindeer
behaviour in grazing areas of the Laevas Sa´mi reindeer
herding community, northern Sweden. Results show that
weather and snow conditions strongly determine grazing
opportunities and therefore reindeer response. We conclude
that together with the cumulative effects of increased
pressures from alternative land use activities, the nonpredictable environmental conditions that are uniquely part
of the warming climate seriously challenge future reindeer
herding in northern Sweden.
Keywords Climate warming Indigenous knowledge
Land use Northern Sweden Reindeer herding
Snow conditions.
- Id:
- 34267
- Submitter:
- zdenek
- Post_time:
- Friday, 01 April 2022 11:51