Lichen cover mapping for caribou ranges in interior Alaska and Yukon
Previous research indicates that the effects of climate warming, including shrub expansion and increased fire frequency may lead to declining lichen abundance in arctic tundra and northern alpine areas. Lichens are important forage for caribou ( Rangifer tarandus ), whose populations are declining t...
Published in: | Environmental Research Letters |
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Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab6d38 https://doaj.org/article/a36bf8a24d414411a16a39f06b0111f7 |
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ftdoajarticles:oai:doaj.org/article:a36bf8a24d414411a16a39f06b0111f7 2023-09-05T13:17:22+02:00 Lichen cover mapping for caribou ranges in interior Alaska and Yukon Matthew J Macander Eric C Palm Gerald V Frost Jim D Herriges Peter R Nelson Carl Roland Kelsey L M Russell Mike J Suitor Torsten W Bentzen Kyle Joly Scott J Goetz Mark Hebblewhite 2020-01-01T00:00:00Z https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab6d38 https://doaj.org/article/a36bf8a24d414411a16a39f06b0111f7 EN eng IOP Publishing https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab6d38 https://doaj.org/toc/1748-9326 doi:10.1088/1748-9326/ab6d38 1748-9326 https://doaj.org/article/a36bf8a24d414411a16a39f06b0111f7 Environmental Research Letters, Vol 15, Iss 5, p 055001 (2020) arctic boreal vulnerability experiment caribou climate change fire lichen remote sensing Environmental technology. Sanitary engineering TD1-1066 Environmental sciences GE1-350 Science Q Physics QC1-999 article 2020 ftdoajarticles https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab6d38 2023-08-13T00:37:08Z Previous research indicates that the effects of climate warming, including shrub expansion and increased fire frequency may lead to declining lichen abundance in arctic tundra and northern alpine areas. Lichens are important forage for caribou ( Rangifer tarandus ), whose populations are declining throughout most of North America. To clarify how lichen cover might affect caribou resource selection, ecologists require better data on the spatial distribution and abundance of lichen. Here, we use a combination of field data and satellite imagery to model lichen cover for a 583 200 km ^2 area that fully encompasses nine caribou ranges in interior Alaska and Yukon. We aggregated data from in situ vegetation plots, aerial survey polygons and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) imagery to align with 30 m resolution Landsat pixels. We used these data to train a random forest model with a suite of environmental and spectral predictors to estimate lichen cover. We validated our lichen cover model using reserved training data and existing external datasets, and found that reserved data from aerial survey polygons ( R ^2 = 0.77) and UAV imagery ( R ^2 = 0.71) provided the best fit. We used our lichen cover map to evaluate the influence of estimated lichen cover on caribou resource selection in the Fortymile Herd from 2012 to 2018 during summer and winter. In both seasons, caribou avoided lichen-poor areas (0%–5% lichen cover) and showed stronger selection as lichen cover increased to ∼30%, above which selection leveled off. Our results suggest that terrestrial lichen cover is an important factor influencing caribou resource selection in northern boreal forests across seasons. Our lichen cover map goes beyond existing maps of lichen abundance and distribution because it incorporates extensive field data for model training and validation and estimates lichen cover over a much larger spatial extent. We expect our landscape-scale map will be useful for understanding trends in lichen abundance and distribution, as well as for caribou ... Article in Journal/Newspaper Arctic Climate change Rangifer tarandus Tundra Alaska Yukon Directory of Open Access Journals: DOAJ Articles Arctic Yukon Environmental Research Letters 15 5 055001 |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
Directory of Open Access Journals: DOAJ Articles |
op_collection_id |
ftdoajarticles |
language |
English |
topic |
arctic boreal vulnerability experiment caribou climate change fire lichen remote sensing Environmental technology. Sanitary engineering TD1-1066 Environmental sciences GE1-350 Science Q Physics QC1-999 |
spellingShingle |
arctic boreal vulnerability experiment caribou climate change fire lichen remote sensing Environmental technology. Sanitary engineering TD1-1066 Environmental sciences GE1-350 Science Q Physics QC1-999 Matthew J Macander Eric C Palm Gerald V Frost Jim D Herriges Peter R Nelson Carl Roland Kelsey L M Russell Mike J Suitor Torsten W Bentzen Kyle Joly Scott J Goetz Mark Hebblewhite Lichen cover mapping for caribou ranges in interior Alaska and Yukon |
topic_facet |
arctic boreal vulnerability experiment caribou climate change fire lichen remote sensing Environmental technology. Sanitary engineering TD1-1066 Environmental sciences GE1-350 Science Q Physics QC1-999 |
description |
Previous research indicates that the effects of climate warming, including shrub expansion and increased fire frequency may lead to declining lichen abundance in arctic tundra and northern alpine areas. Lichens are important forage for caribou ( Rangifer tarandus ), whose populations are declining throughout most of North America. To clarify how lichen cover might affect caribou resource selection, ecologists require better data on the spatial distribution and abundance of lichen. Here, we use a combination of field data and satellite imagery to model lichen cover for a 583 200 km ^2 area that fully encompasses nine caribou ranges in interior Alaska and Yukon. We aggregated data from in situ vegetation plots, aerial survey polygons and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) imagery to align with 30 m resolution Landsat pixels. We used these data to train a random forest model with a suite of environmental and spectral predictors to estimate lichen cover. We validated our lichen cover model using reserved training data and existing external datasets, and found that reserved data from aerial survey polygons ( R ^2 = 0.77) and UAV imagery ( R ^2 = 0.71) provided the best fit. We used our lichen cover map to evaluate the influence of estimated lichen cover on caribou resource selection in the Fortymile Herd from 2012 to 2018 during summer and winter. In both seasons, caribou avoided lichen-poor areas (0%–5% lichen cover) and showed stronger selection as lichen cover increased to ∼30%, above which selection leveled off. Our results suggest that terrestrial lichen cover is an important factor influencing caribou resource selection in northern boreal forests across seasons. Our lichen cover map goes beyond existing maps of lichen abundance and distribution because it incorporates extensive field data for model training and validation and estimates lichen cover over a much larger spatial extent. We expect our landscape-scale map will be useful for understanding trends in lichen abundance and distribution, as well as for caribou ... |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Matthew J Macander Eric C Palm Gerald V Frost Jim D Herriges Peter R Nelson Carl Roland Kelsey L M Russell Mike J Suitor Torsten W Bentzen Kyle Joly Scott J Goetz Mark Hebblewhite |
author_facet |
Matthew J Macander Eric C Palm Gerald V Frost Jim D Herriges Peter R Nelson Carl Roland Kelsey L M Russell Mike J Suitor Torsten W Bentzen Kyle Joly Scott J Goetz Mark Hebblewhite |
author_sort |
Matthew J Macander |
title |
Lichen cover mapping for caribou ranges in interior Alaska and Yukon |
title_short |
Lichen cover mapping for caribou ranges in interior Alaska and Yukon |
title_full |
Lichen cover mapping for caribou ranges in interior Alaska and Yukon |
title_fullStr |
Lichen cover mapping for caribou ranges in interior Alaska and Yukon |
title_full_unstemmed |
Lichen cover mapping for caribou ranges in interior Alaska and Yukon |
title_sort |
lichen cover mapping for caribou ranges in interior alaska and yukon |
publisher |
IOP Publishing |
publishDate |
2020 |
url |
https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab6d38 https://doaj.org/article/a36bf8a24d414411a16a39f06b0111f7 |
geographic |
Arctic Yukon |
geographic_facet |
Arctic Yukon |
genre |
Arctic Climate change Rangifer tarandus Tundra Alaska Yukon |
genre_facet |
Arctic Climate change Rangifer tarandus Tundra Alaska Yukon |
op_source |
Environmental Research Letters, Vol 15, Iss 5, p 055001 (2020) |
op_relation |
https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab6d38 https://doaj.org/toc/1748-9326 doi:10.1088/1748-9326/ab6d38 1748-9326 https://doaj.org/article/a36bf8a24d414411a16a39f06b0111f7 |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab6d38 |
container_title |
Environmental Research Letters |
container_volume |
15 |
container_issue |
5 |
container_start_page |
055001 |
_version_ |
1776198571127734272 |