Winter Range Studies of the Western Arctic Caribou Herd, Northwest Alaska

Download or read book Winter Range Studies of the Western Arctic Caribou Herd, Northwest Alaska written by Kyle Joly and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Climate change is likely to bring a myriad of interrelated changes to the Arctic. One change is warmer and drier conditions that could increase the prevalence of wildfire in northwest Alaska. Wildfires destroy terricolous lichens that Western Arctic Herd caribou (Rangifer tarandus) rely on during winter; taking decades to recover. My goals were to assess the recent (1950-2007) fire regime within the herd's range, identify characteristics of habitat selected by overwintering caribou, and determine the potential impacts of climate change on the fire regime and caribou winter range. I used a combination of existing data and information collected at vegetation plots to conduct these analyses. I found that wildfires in the tundra were relatively common from 1950-2007, covering approximately 10% of northwest Alaska. Tundra was > 4.5 times more likely to re-burn than boreal forest. This novel, yet intuitive finding could have serious implications if fire starts to become more common in the Arctic. I found that the average annual area burned more than doubled in years where mean August temperatures exceeded 11.7° C (53° F). Caribou use tundra and forested during winter but avoided recently (