| Name of applicant: Jenny Córdoba
Supervisor: Marianne Stoessel (PhD student at the Department of Physical Geography)
Co-supervisor: Regina Lindborg (Professor at the Department of Physical Geography)
Nature of project: Master thesis (60 credits, 36 weeks)
Disciplines: Landscape Ecology and Remote Sensing
Amount requested: 10 000 SEK
Purpose of scholarship
For my master’s thesis in the Landscape Ecology programme at Stockholm University (Department of Physical Geography), I am planning to study the climate-induced effects on reindeer movement and their habitat use in northern Sweden.
For the past decades, reindeer husbandry in Fennoscandia has experienced severe challenges due to climate change, conflicting land use and predation (Rivrud et al., 2018; Skarin et al., 2018; Stoessel et al., Under review). One of the most imminent challenges is the increasing temperatures (Tyler et al., 2007; Rosqvist et al., 2022) which are altering plants on a community level which could lead to a shift in dominant vegetation from graminoids to deciduous shrubs (i.e., shrubification) (Mod and Luoto, 2016). Reindeer grazing is considered an ecological keystone in the alpine ecosystems and provides valuable ecosystem services by maintaining biodiversity and mitigating ongoing shrubification (Swedish Government 2000; Bråthen et al., 2007; Olofsson et al., 2009 Egelkraut et al., 2020). Skarin et al. (2010) have found that reindeer foraging and habitat selection is influenced by weather parameters and insect harassment. This suggests that reindeer will spend more time in areas of low-quality vegetation in response to heat stress and high oestrid activity due to warm temperatures.
For this reason, my main objective for my Master’s thesis is to investigate how reindeer respond to increasing temperature in summer pastures. I will do so by creating fine-scale temperature maps that enable linking reindeer movement responses to microclimatic conditions. I hypothesize that, under a warm spell, the use of the summer pastures will be decreased, reducing the browsing activities of the reindeer in the shrubby low-altitude areas. To test this hypothesis, I will estimate their home-ranges based on positioning data from semi-domesticated reindeer equipped with Global Positioning System (GPS) collars collected in 2019 and 2020 by my co-supervisor Marianne Stoessel. I am also planning to produce a land-cover classification based on aerial and satellites images to assess the vegetation quality of the summer pastures and how the reindeer utilizes the landscape throughout the snow-free season. Ultimately, my project aims at estimating whether reindeer can still mitigate shrubification and maintain the mountain landscape in a warming climate.
Please find the budget table and the time table of the Master's project in the uploaded PDF file.
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