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

北美驯鹿在西北地区和加拿大各地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由于全球变暖而在北方纬度发生的火灾活动增加的影响。这一关切源于一种长期以来的观点，即在陆地地衣这种重要食物资源的生物量恢复之前，驯鹿对被烧毁的地区的利用有限。这种复苏可能需要40年或更长时间。然而，在西北地区的驯鹿已被观察到使用一些非常大的最近烧伤在夏季。这提出了几个问题：为什么驯鹿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，何时以及为什么？该提案试图通过利用申请方在植被动态建模和驯鹿移动数据统计分析方面的专门知识，将合作伙伴广泛的高分辨率驯鹿位置数据与申请方和合作方收集的同延植被地块数据相结合，来回答这些问题。预期的结果是一个机械的理解驯鹿的行为反应的结构和组成的植被群落发生在火灾后的第一个几十年的变化。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驯鹿种群对西北地区不断变化的火灾状况和植被的反应，作为西北地区及其他地区综合建模研究的一部分。

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.