Boreal caribou movement in relation to forage availability and habitat structure within regenerating burns

北方驯鹿在西北地区（NWT）和整个加拿大具有重要的文化意义。根据《濒危物种法》，它们被列为“受威胁”物种，它们的种群被认为容易受到全球变暖导致北纬地区火灾活动增加的影响。这种担忧源于长期以来的观点，即在重要的食物资源——陆地地衣的生物量恢复之前，驯鹿对烧焦地区的利用是有限的。这种复苏可能需要40年甚至更长时间。然而，据观察，西北地区的驯鹿在夏天会使用一些非常大的烧伤。这就提出了几个问题：为什么驯鹿会使用这些火灾后早期的栖息地？他们会停止使用它们吗？如果是，什么时候，为什么？该提案试图通过将合作伙伴广泛的、高分辨率的驯鹿位置数据与申请人和合作者收集的同样广泛的植被图数据相结合，通过申请人在植被动力学建模和驯鹿运动数据统计分析方面的专业知识来回答这些问题。预期的结果是对火灾后最初几十年里发生的植被群落结构和组成变化的驯鹿行为反应的机制理解。研究结果将被整合到生态预测工具中，以使其他研究人员能够探索西北西北地区的驯鹿种群对变化的火灾状况和植被的反应，作为西北西北地区及其他地区全面建模研究的一部分。

Boreal caribou are of great cultural importance in the Northwest Territories (NWT), and across Canada. Listed as "threatened" under the Species at Risk Act, their populations are considered vulnerable to increases in fire activity that are taking place at northern latitudes due to global warming. This concern follows from the long-established view that caribou make limited use of burned areas until the biomass of terrestrial lichens, a vital food resource, has recovered. This recovery may take 40 years or longer. However, caribou in the NWT have been observed to use some very large recent burns in summer. This raises several questions: Why are caribou using these early post-fire habitats? Will they stop using them? If so, when and why? This proposal seeks to answer those questions by integrating the partner's extensive, high resolution caribou location data with coextensive vegetation plot data assembled by the applicants and collaborators, by means of the applicant's expertise in vegetation dynamics modelling and the statistical analysis of caribou movement data. The expected outcome is a mechanistic understanding of caribou behavioural responses to the changes in the structure and composition of vegetation communities that take place over the first decades after fire. The results will be integrated in ecological forecasting tools so as to enable other researchers to explore caribou population responses to changing fire regime and vegetation in the NWT, as part of comprehensive modelling studies emerging for the NWT and beyond.