Animal Movements as an Earth System: A Case Study with Caribou

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Dr. Elie Gurarie

University of Maryland, Department of Biology

Monday April 22, 2019, 12:00-1:00 PM

ESSIC Conference Room 4102, 5825 University Research Ct, College Park, MD 20740

Abstract:

Animal populations and distributions are impacted directly by their abiotic environment, and understanding their response to climate change is a central question in ecology, as well as a pressing one for conservation and management. These issues are especially pointed in the Arctic and boreal regions (ABR), which been warming more rapidly than other regions on Earth. The consequences of warming in the ABR are complex: the tundra is generally “greening” as shrubs are expanding into grass and moss dominated landscapes, while the boreal forest is “browning”, i.e. losing biomass to increased wildfire, drought and disease. In an added twist, the presence of large numbers of herbivores in the Arctic itself has important impacts on vegetation, and thus on the carbon cycle. A challenge of working in the ABR is the remoteness and difficulty of making observations. However, ever-improving animal tracking technologies, especially GPS collars, are making large spatial and long-term analyses of animal movements and distributions in remote areas increasingly feasible. 

Perhaps no large animal is as important to the ecology of ABR as caribou and reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) – a keystone species which is extremely abundant, a high-impact herbivore, an important prey species, and are central to the material and spiritual culture of people throughout the Arctic. They also link the boreal forest to the tundra through their iconic long-distance migrations. In many parts of their range, caribou populations are also declining – in some places precipitously – even as the climate changes. But definitive links between climate and caribou populations remain elusive.  

I will present a long-term, large-scaled study on the environmental drivers of caribou migration across North America wherein we analyzed dats from over 1000 individual caribou from seven major populations, spanning 3,000 km across Alaska, Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut in Canada over several decades. We discovered a surprising and striking continent-wide synchrony in spring migration departure times, driven mainly by large scale, ocean-driven climate indices (Pacific Decadal Oscillation, Arctic Oscillation and North Atlantic Oscillation). But arrival timing depended, unintuitively, on weather conditions from the previous summer. These results have interesting ecological interpretations and can be placed within a mechanistic framework that links climate and caribou population dynamics. On the basis of this – and other, related – studies, I present what I see to be some of the most important opportunities and challenges in studying animal movements and populations at a scale that approaches Earth System Science.

Bio-sketch:

Dr. Elie Gurarie (Department of Biology) is a quantitative wildlife ecologist who combines empirical and theoretical approaches in the service of answering questions related to habitat use, spatial distributions, cognition, and population dynamics of animals in dynamic and heterogeneous environments. He obtained his PhD in Quantitative Ecology and Resource Management from the University of Washington, Seattle, conducted post-doctoral research at the University of Helsinki in Finland, at the Marine Mammal Laboratory – NOAA, Seattle, at the Universities of Melbourne and Queensland in Australia prior to joining the Department of Biology, University of Maryland – College Park.

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