Fauchald, PerPark, TaejinTømmervik, HansMyneni, RangaHausner, Vera Helene2018-02-052018-02-052017-04Per Fauchald, Taejin Park, Hans Tømmervik, Ranga Myneni, Vera Helene Hausner. 2017. "Arctic greening from warming promotes declines in caribou populations.." Sci Adv, Volume 3, Issue 4: e1601365.2375-2548https://hdl.handle.net/2144/26696The migratory tundra caribou herds in North America follow decadal population cycles, and browsing from abundant caribou could be expected to counteract the current climate-driven expansion of shrubs in the circumpolar tundra biome. We demonstrate that the sea ice cover in the Arctic Ocean has provided a strong signal for climate-induced changes on the adjacent caribou summer ranges, outperforming other climate indices in explaining the caribou-plant dynamics. We found no evidence of a negative effect of caribou abundance on vegetation biomass. On the contrary, we found a strong bottom-up effect in which a warmer climate related to diminishing sea ice has increased the plant biomass on the summer pastures, along with a paradoxical decline in caribou populations. This result suggests that this climate-induced greening has been accompanied by a deterioration of pasture quality. The shrub expansion in Arctic North America involves plant species with strong antibrowsing defenses. Our results might therefore be an early signal of a climate-driven shift in the caribou-plant interaction from a system with low plant biomass modulated by cyclic caribou populations to a system dominated by nonedible shrubs and diminishing herds of migratory caribou.e1601365 - ?2017 © The Authors, some rights reserved. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC).http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/Science & technologyMultidisciplinary sciencesTundra vegetation changeSea-ice declineTime seriesPlant phenologyHerbivoresClimateArctic sea iceClimate changeNormalized Difference Vegetation IndexRangifer tarandusPopulation dynamicsCaribouArctic greening from warming promotes declines in caribou populationsArticle10.1126/sciadv.16013650000-0002-0234-6393 (Myneni, Ranga)