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

• Main Authors: Fauchald, Per, Park, Taejin, Tømmervik, Hans, Myneni, Ranga, Hausner, Vera Helene
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: Dryad 2018
• Subjects: Arctic greening; Rangifer tarandus; migratory tundra caribou; sea-ice; Arctic; Arctic Ocean; Arctic Greening; Sea ice; Tundra
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.d12t1; https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.d12t1

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 ... : Data Fauchald et al. SciAdv 2017Excel sheets including caribou population data, NDVI, sea-ice, temperature and snow cover.Data_Fauchald_et_al_SciAdv_2017.xlsx ...