Data from: Arctic greening from warming promotes declines in caribou populations

• Main Authors: Fauchald, Per, Park, Taejin, Tømmervik, Hans, Myneni, Ranga, Hausner, Vera Helene
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2017
• Subjects: Life sciences; medicine and health care; Arctic; Arctic Ocean; Arctic Greening; Sea ice; Tundra
• Online Access: http://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:nl:ui:13-85-aos3; https://easy.dans.knaw.nl/ui/datasets/id/easy-dataset:102025

The migratory tundra caribou herds in North America follow decadal population cycles, and browsing from abundant caribou could be expected to counteract the current climate-driven expansion of shrubs in the circumpolar tundra biome. We demonstrate that the sea ice cover in the Arctic Ocean has provided a strong signal for climate-induced changes on the adjacent caribou summer ranges, outperforming other climate indices in explaining the caribou-plant dynamics. We found no evidence of a negative effect of caribou abundance on vegetation biomass. On the contrary, we found a strong bottom-up effect in which a warmer climate related to diminishing sea ice has increased the plant biomass on the summer pastures, along with a paradoxical decline in caribou populations. This result suggests that this climate-induced greening has been accompanied by a deterioration of pasture quality. The shrub expansion in Arctic North America involves plant species with strong antibrowsing defenses. Our results might therefore be an early signal of a climate-driven shift in the caribou-plant interaction from a system with low plant biomass modulated by cyclic caribou populations to a system dominated by nonedible shrubs and diminishing herds of migratory caribou.