| NSF Org: |
OPP Office of Polar Programs (OPP) |
| Recipient: |
|
| Initial Amendment Date: | July 18, 2016 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | January 4, 2023 |
| Award Number: | 1604249 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Colleen Strawhacker
colstraw@nsf.gov (703)292-7432 OPP Office of Polar Programs (OPP) GEO Directorate for Geosciences |
| Start Date: | January 1, 2017 |
| End Date: | December 31, 2023 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $988,609.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $1,103,608.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
FY 2021 = $114,999.00 |
| History of Investigator: |
|
| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
3211 PROVIDENCE DR ANCHORAGE AK US 99508-4614 (907)786-1777 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
|
| Primary Place of Performance: |
3200 Providence Dr. Anchorage AK US 99516-4862 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
|
| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
|
| Parent UEI: |
|
| NSF Program(s): | ARCSS-Arctic System Science |
| Primary Program Source: |
|
| Program Reference Code(s): |
|
| Program Element Code(s): |
|
| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.078 |
ABSTRACT
Terrestrial Arctic systems are the result of complex interactions between climate, vegetation, herbivores, and humans that must be studied together to understand their functional
traits. While low temperatures and short-growing seasons limit plant growth, enough plant biomass exists to support herds of migratory caribou, on which Alaska Natives depend. Any changes in the plants at the base of the food web can have cascading consequences for herbivores and human consumers and their interactions. Today, the Arctic system is in the midst of change resulting in new vegetation assemblages, changes in the nutritive value of plant tissues, and ultimately in the diets of migratory caribou and the humans that depend on them. This project examines the nutritional landscape of the Central Arctic Caribou Herd as a unifying concept, describing the nutritional landscape as caribou available protein (CAP) and caribou available energy
(CAE), integrative forage quantity measures that reflect biomass, species composition, plant
C and N content, digestibility, and secondary compounds. The core objectives are gaining understanding of the drivers of spatial and temporal patterns in the amounts of CAP and CAE across the tundra; caribou use of this nutritional landscape; how the amounts of CAP and CAE will differ in the future under likely climate scenarios and long-term experiments, and the interactions between caribou and Native communities.
The broader impacts of this study involve several groups of Alaskan stakeholders, including: harvesters of the North Slope community of Nuiqsut, the worldwide caribou community, and students at multiple stages of education. The project will embed a team member with hunters in Nuiqsut,
and develop an educational scientific documentary on the caribou - Alaska Native interactions for
high school students. The group plans to employ village students and undergraduates affiliated with the Alaska Native Science
and Engineering Program to assist with experimental work and vegetation collection at Toolik Lake. This research is significant to ecologists from the Circumarctic Rangifer Monitoring
and Assessment Network, dedicated
to caribou conservation and sustainable management in the US, Canada, and Scandinavia, who will use the data to consider how a suite of climate change scenarios affect herd fecundity and population dynamics.
The intellectual merit of this project stems from the merging of five elements to understand Arctic
System function and response to climate change: (1) A landscape-scale assessment of plant species, soil and plant C and N, digestibility, and secondary compounds that will be used
to calculate the amounts of CAP (kg m-2) and CAE (kJ m-2); (2) analysis of how closely caribou foraging is tied to the nutritional landscape throughout the year; (3) analysis of samples
from an existing long-term winter - summer climate change experiment to provide data on how
CAP and CAE will differ in the future; (4) prediction of future nutritional landscapes and
caribou foraging interactions; and (5) observations of Alaska Native hunter harvesting and attributes
of the system that determine their spatial and temporal patterns. These project components will enable an integrative understanding of how an important herbivore, caribou, interact with a landscape that is rapidly changing. This research: (1) examines the Arctic System from primary production to secondary consumers and the
influence of climate change across multiple trophic levels; (2) applies broadly by examining
the most abundant large herbivore and its food sources, both of which are distributed throughout
the Arctic; and (3) integrates experimental, observational, and modeling approaches to understanding ecological systems and climate change. The integration of observation, experimental data
and modeling to describe current and forecast future nutritional landscapes is intended to provide a
mechanistic understanding of Arctic System function and transform the understanding
of climate-vegetation-caribou-subsistence hunter interactions.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
Note:
When clicking on a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) number, you will be taken to an external
site maintained by the publisher. Some full text articles may not yet be available without a
charge during the embargo (administrative interval).
Some links on this page may take you to non-federal websites. Their policies may differ from
this site.
PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
This project has been addressing the Arctic Caribou System in northern Alaska focused on the Central Arctic Herd, one of 4 major groups of caribou that use the Arctic and the Boreal landscapes of northern Alaska for their home ranges. Our study has been asking fundamental questions about: a) how do the nutritional landscapes, forage quality, of the Central Arctic Herds home range vary from the Brooks Range to the Arctic Coastal Plain? b) what are the processes that control caribou winter range selection being either in the tundra or in the mountainous boreal forest south of the Brooks Range mountains? And, what are the patterns of caribou foraging on these two different winter ranges? c) what is the role of snow and how have snow properties (e.g. timing of snow on and snow off) effect subsequent summer forage attributes over the last ~ 20 years? d) what are the nutritional traits of future caribou forage as we move into the New Arctic over the next 20-30 years where deeper snow in winter and summer temperatures are a likely possibility? This forecasting research is made possible by our ITEX (International Tundra Experiment) field research where we have an increased snow treatment that was started in 1994 with NSF funding.
These science-based studies are complemented by a host of broader impacts of this program that include: a) training of postdoctoral scientists, graduate (PhD and MS students) and undergraduates (minority, male and female), b) the integration of multiple scientific disciplines including remote sensing, landscape ecology, snow physics, numerical modeling, ungulate movement ecology into a comprehensive team to address Arctic Caribou Systems, c) involving citizen science teams from the caribou guiding and sport hunting community in our understanding of landscape use by caribou, d) collaborating with state of Alaska wildlife biologists so that our research can inform their resource management perspectives and science applications, and e) sharing our data resources with other NSF funded scientists whom are developing population carry capacity models for the Alaskan tundra.
We have also developed an international component to this project associated with Dr. Welker?s UArctic Research Chairship and his joint appointment between the University of Oulu, Finland and the University of Alaska, Anchorage. A postdoctoral snow scientist from the University of Oulu, Dr. Pertti Ala-aho, solidified this international program and cross-university collaboration with a research visit. Pertti accompanied our winter field research team and collected snow profile samples to address aspects of snow moisture sources via isotope geochemistry (δ18O & δ2H) fingerprints. These samples allowed Dr. Ala-aho to determine whether snowpacks have the ability retain storm history throughout the winter in AK and in Arctic Finland.
The main discoveries we have made with our research are:
Timing and distribution of autumn snow determines caribou wintering north or south of the Alaska Brooks Range
Deep snows of the future enhance Alaskan caribou forage quality in autumn; improving the likelihood of caribou winter survival
Snow packs in Alaska and Finland exhibit differential retention of winter storm tracks in their water isotope stratigraphy
Linking long-term winter snow properties with spring and summer conditions across N Alaska reveals plant community specific growth and productivity patterns and differential sensitivities to a New Arctic with different winter snow and summer temperature regimes
Tundra vegetation nutritional landscapes exhibit a north to south pattern of forage quality that is driven in part by vegetation community distribution and summer growing season temperatures.
Extrapolating the individual cow and calf responses using a population model suggested that if hot summers become the normal, and all other factors remained the same, a migratory tundra herd would be 3% less productive.
We are now able to simulate snow strength across the Arctic snow types, tundra snow and boreal forest, using the newly-developed SnowStrength model together with a suite of physics-based, multi-resolution modeling tools called SnowModel.
Last Modified: 05/14/2024
Modified by: Jeffrey M Welker
Please report errors in award information by writing to: awardsearch@nsf.gov.
