Paper short abstract:

Reindeer herders’ observations in Fennoscandia testify changes of their pastoral landscape due to interacting environmental drivers and anthropogenic landscape change. These transformations challenge the management of social-ecological systems and indigenous livelihoods in the Fennoscandian North.

Paper long abstract:

Many indigenous livelihoods are confronted with accelerating effects of resource exploitation and environmental change. The often close connection of indigenous populations to their lands provides them with detailed observations of how environmental changes transform their landscapes of daily activities. Here, we report on Sámi reindeer herders' perspectives on transformations of the tundra in Northern Fennoscandia.

Reindeer herders report among others changes in seasonality, rising tree line, more extreme events, unstable weather (i.e. unreliable). If and where the tree line rises, the arctic and alpine biota of Fennoscandia will suffer from habitat loss, as well as the herding practices need to be adopted to these changes. However, the drivers of tree line expansion into hitherto open mountain vegetation are diverse and differ across the Fennoscandian study region. An important driver to affect the tree line dynamics are the direct and indirect effects of reindeer, which might offer new strategies of ecosystem management to counteract a potential encroachment of the tundra by woody plants.

If the magnitude of these transformations exceeds the adaptive capacity of indigenous livelihoods to react, and no actions are taken to protect and strengthen them, the cultural survival of indigenous populations may be threatened. Novel solutions in environmental governance are therefore confronted with difficult trade-offs involved in ecosystem management for ecologically reasonable, economically viable and socially desirable management strategies.