Collaborative Research: Nutritional Landscapes of Arctic Caribou: Observations, Experiments, and Models Provide Process-Level Understanding of Forage Traits and Trajectories

合作研究：北极驯鹿的营养景观：观察、实验和模型提供了对饲料特性和轨迹的过程级理解

• 批准号: 1604249
• 负责人: Jeffrey Welker
• 金额: $ 98.86万
• 依托单位: University of Alaska Anchorage Campus
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2017-01-01 至 2023-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1604249&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Nutritional; Landscapes; Arctic

Terrestrial Arctic systems are the result of complex interactions between climate, vegetation, herbivores, and humans that must be studied together to understand their functional
traits. While low temperatures and short-growing seasons limit plant growth, enough plant biomass exists to support herds of migratory caribou, on which Alaska Natives depend. Any changes in the plants at the base of the food web can have cascading consequences for herbivores and human consumers and their interactions. Today, the Arctic system is in the midst of change resulting in new vegetation assemblages, changes in the nutritive value of plant tissues, and ultimately in the diets of migratory caribou and the humans that depend on them. This project examines the nutritional landscape of the Central Arctic Caribou Herd as a unifying concept, describing the nutritional landscape as caribou available protein (CAP) and caribou available energy
(CAE), integrative forage quantity measures that reflect biomass, species composition, plant
C and N content, digestibility, and secondary compounds. The core objectives are gaining understanding of the drivers of spatial and temporal patterns in the amounts of CAP and CAE across the tundra; caribou use of this nutritional landscape; how the amounts of CAP and CAE will differ in the future under likely climate scenarios and long-term experiments, and the interactions between caribou and Native communities. The broader impacts of this study involve several groups of Alaskan stakeholders, including: harvesters of the North Slope community of Nuiqsut, the worldwide caribou community, and students at multiple stages of education. The project will embed a team member with hunters in Nuiqsut,
and develop an educational scientific documentary on the caribou - Alaska Native interactions for
high school students. The group plans to employ village students and undergraduates affiliated with the Alaska Native Science
and Engineering Program to assist with experimental work and vegetation collection at Toolik Lake. This research is significant to ecologists from the Circumarctic Rangifer Monitoring
and Assessment Network, dedicated
to caribou conservation and sustainable management in the US, Canada, and Scandinavia, who will use the data to consider how a suite of climate change scenarios affect herd fecundity and population dynamics. The intellectual merit of this project stems from the merging of five elements to understand Arctic
System function and response to climate change: (1) A landscape-scale assessment of plant species, soil and plant C and N, digestibility, and secondary compounds that will be used
to calculate the amounts of CAP (kg m-2) and CAE (kJ m-2); (2) analysis of how closely caribou foraging is tied to the nutritional landscape throughout the year; (3) analysis of samples
from an existing long-term winter - summer climate change experiment to provide data on how
CAP and CAE will differ in the future; (4) prediction of future nutritional landscapes and
caribou foraging interactions; and (5) observations of Alaska Native hunter harvesting and attributes
of the system that determine their spatial and temporal patterns. These project components will enable an integrative understanding of how an important herbivore, caribou, interact with a landscape that is rapidly changing. This research: (1) examines the Arctic System from primary production to secondary consumers and the
influence of climate change across multiple trophic levels; (2) applies broadly by examining
the most abundant large herbivore and its food sources, both of which are distributed throughout
the Arctic; and (3) integrates experimental, observational, and modeling approaches to understanding ecological systems and climate change. The integration of observation, experimental data
and modeling to describe current and forecast future nutritional landscapes is intended to provide a
mechanistic understanding of Arctic System function and transform the understanding
of climate-vegetation-caribou-subsistence hunter interactions.

北极陆地系统是气候、植被、食草动物和人类之间复杂相互作用的结果，必须一起研究才能了解它们的功能特征。虽然低温和短生长季节限制了植物的生长，但有足够的植物生物量来养活阿拉斯加原住民赖以生存的迁徙驯鹿群。食物链底部植物的任何变化都可能对食草动物和人类消费者及其相互作用产生连锁后果。今天，北极系统正在发生变化，导致新的植被组合，植物组织的营养价值发生变化，最终导致迁徙驯鹿和依赖它们的人类的饮食发生变化。本项目将考察中北极驯鹿群的营养景观作为一个统一的概念，将营养景观描述为北美驯鹿可用蛋白质(CAP)和北美驯鹿可用能量(CAE)，反映生物量、物种组成、植物C和N含量、消化率和次生化合物的综合饲草量指标。核心目标是了解整个冻土带CAP和CAE数量的空间和时间模式的驱动因素；驯鹿对这一营养景观的利用；在可能的气候情景和长期实验下，未来CAP和CAE的数量将如何不同；以及驯鹿与土著社区之间的互动。这项研究的更广泛影响涉及阿拉斯加的几个利益攸关方群体，包括：Nuiqsut北坡社区的收割机、世界各地的驯鹿社区和处于不同教育阶段的学生。该项目将在努伊克苏特嵌入一名团队成员和猎人，并为高中生制作一部关于驯鹿-阿拉斯加原住民互动的教育科学纪录片。该组织计划雇用村里的学生和阿拉斯加原住民科学与工程项目的本科生，以协助图利克湖的实验工作和植被采集。这项研究对北极圈驯鹿监测和评估网络的生态学家具有重要意义，该网络致力于美国、加拿大和斯堪的纳维亚半岛的驯鹿保护和可持续管理，他们将使用这些数据来考虑一系列气候变化情景如何影响驯鹿繁殖力和种群动态。这个项目的智力价值来自于五个要素的融合，以了解北极的系统功能和对气候变化的响应：(1)对植物物种、土壤和植物的C和N、消化率和次生化合物的景观规模评估，这些评估将被用来计算CAP(kg m-2)和CAE(kJ m-2)的数量；(2)分析驯鹿全年觅食与营养景观的密切关系；(3)样品分析；来自现有的冬季-夏季长期气候变化实验，以提供关于未来CAP和CAE将如何不同的数据；(4)对未来营养景观和驯鹿觅食互动的预测；以及(5)对阿拉斯加土著猎人收获的观察，以及决定其空间和时间模式的系统属性。这些项目组成部分将使人们能够对一种重要的食草动物驯鹿如何与迅速变化的景观相互作用有一个综合的了解。这项研究：(1)考察从初级生产到次级消费的北极系统以及气候变化对多个营养层次的影响；(2)通过考察分布在北极各地的最丰富的大型食草动物及其食物来源来广泛应用；(3)综合实验、观测和建模方法，以了解生态系统和气候变化。将观测、实验数据和建模相结合来描述当前和预测未来的营养景观，意在提供对北极系统功能的机械性理解，并改变对气候-植被-驯鹿-自给自足猎人相互作用的理解。