Reindeer food in Lapland

Reindeer are a common sight here in northern Finland. They are a domesticated livestock that are a well-known part of the livelihood of the Sami people, a native culture here in Lapland. The reindeer are owned and herded by particular families, but are allowed to wander in their designated areas. We see them around the state forest lands here around the research station, and even on the road in town!

Andrew shared this photo of a reindeer he met while doing his field work.

Diego and Stephanie are interested in the plants that provide food for these reindeer. They eat a lot during summer when there is plenty of vegetation available, including quite a lot of the species here around the research station. Stephanie and Diego learned from Rauni, the station's resident plant expert, which species are eaten by the reindeer, and chose to focus on the birch and willow species. They then surveyed the forests around the station to measure the actual abundance of these plants. They measured the abundance using belt transects:

Diego in the distance measuring one of the replicate belt transects.

Diego and Stephanie ran many transects all around the station, to calculate the abundance of birch and willow in all directions from the station. The number of plants in each transect can be used to calculate the abundance per square meter of forest.

Stephanie measuring another one of the replicate transects!

They are most interested in how the abundance of these plants might change in the future, with projected warming from climate change. Would there be more or less of these plants available to feed the reindeer? We don't have enough time at the station to test this ourselves, because it takes years to understand how a species will change with a warming climate. Instead, they are spending a LOT of time looking at published research from other scientists who have already conducted these types of studies. This means a lot of computer time using the library resources!

Stephanie and Diego in the common room, reading and discussing.

Diego and Stephanie are using the data they find to make mathematical projections into the future. They are finding published results of the magnitude of changes in birch and willow species in warming experiments conducted here in the Arctic. Then, they can apply these changes to the abundances that they measured during their field work, to predict what amount of these plants might be available as reindeer food far into the future.

They will communicate their results through a creative mixed-media project. They plan to use aerial photographs of their study region, repeated in a line to represent a timeline from now into the climate future, one for every decade of their projection. They will project colors onto the photographs that represent the species they studied, and the colors will become more or less abundant as you move forward in the timeline.