Data from: Caribou, water, and ice – fine-scale movements of a migratory arctic ungulate in the context of climate change

• Main Authors: Leblond, Mathieu, St-Laurent, Martin-Hugues, Côté, Steeve D.
• Format: Dataset
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2017
• Subjects: Migratory caribou; Space use; movements; Rangifer tarandus; long-distance migration; scales; step selection function; Arctic; Canada; Rivière aux Feuilles; Climate change
• Online Access: https://zenodo.org/record/4958113; https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.4k275

Freshwater lakes and rivers of the Northern Hemisphere have been freezing increasingly later and thawing increasingly earlier during the last century. With reduced temporal periods during which ice conditions are favourable for locomotion, freshwater bodies could become impediments to the inter-patch movements, dispersion, or migration of terrestrial animals that use ice-covered lakes and rivers to move across their range. Studying the fine-scale responses of individuals to broad-scale changes in ice availability and phenology would help to understand how animals react to ongoing climate change, and contribute to the conservation and management of endangered species living in northern environments. Between 2007 and 2014, we equipped 96 migratory caribou Rangifer tarandus caribou from the Rivière-aux-Feuilles herd in northern Québec (Canada) with GPS telemetry collars and studied their space use. We measured contemporary (digital MODIS maps updated every 8 days, 2000–2014) and historical (annual observations, 1947–1985) variations in freshwater-ice availability and evaluated the concurrent responses of caribou to these changes. Ice-crossing locationsThe GPS locations (n = 653) of migratory caribou from the Rivière-aux-Feuilles herd that crossed lakes on ice from 2007 to 2014 in northern Quebec.IceCross_Data.xlsxWater-crossing locationsThe GPS locations (n = 139) of migratory caribou from the Rivière-aux-Feuilles herd that crossed lakes through water from 2007 to 2014 in northern Quebec.WaterCross_Data.xlsxDetour locationsThe GPS locations (n = 1119) of migratory caribou from the Rivière-aux-Feuilles herd that circumvented lakes from 2007 to 2014 in northern Quebec.Detour_Data.xlsxProportion of ice and waterProportion of ice and water on the largest water bodies used by migratory caribou of the Rivière-aux-Feuilles herd in northern Quebec. Ice and water coverages were estimated using 8-day averaged MODIS values from 2000 to 2014. "Sum lake" and "Sum lake-ice" respectively represent the sum of pixels with values ...