Compound hazards of climate change, forestry, and other encroachments on winter pasturelands: a storyline approach in a forest reindeer herding community in Northern Sweden
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract The impacts of climate change on rural cultures and livelihoods depend on how the resulting complex biophysical processes may transform people’s land use practices. We argue that research can incorporate local concerns of compound hazards through deterministic rather than probabilistic approaches to better understand the multiple causations involved in such climate change impacts. We apply mixed methods within a storyline approach to examine how a forest reindeer herding community in Northern Sweden copes with and experiences basal ice formation on their winter pasturelands under the influence of climatic and environmental change. Our results show that the detrimental impact of basal ice formation on the availability of winter forage for reindeer is amplified by the directional effects of climate change and encroachments, especially particular forestry practices and their surrounding infrastructure. On the one hand, we show that policy action can address local concerns through ecological interventions that improve the amount and distribution of ground and pendulous lichens at the pastoral landscape scale. On the other hand, we show that policy inaction can threaten the community’s desired experience of human-animal relations in their landscape, which was inextricably connected to ecological conditions for natural pasture-based reindeer pastoralism.
期刊介绍:
Environmental changes of many kinds are accelerating worldwide, posing significant challenges for humanity. Solutions are needed at the regional level, where physical features of the landscape, biological systems, and human institutions interact.
The goal of Regional Environmental Change is to publish scientific research and opinion papers that improve our understanding of the extent of these changes, their causes, their impacts on people, and the options for society to respond. "Regional" refers to the full range of scales between local and global, including regions defined by natural criteria, such as watersheds and ecosystems, and those defined by human activities, such as urban areas and their hinterlands.
We encourage submissions on interdisciplinary research across the natural sciences, social sciences and humanities, and on more focused studies that contribute towards the solutions to complex environmental problems. Topics addressed include (i) the regional manifestations of global change, especially the vulnerability of regions and sectors; (ii) the adaptation of social-ecological systems to environmental change in the context of sustainable development; and (iii) trans-boundary and cross-jurisdictional issues, legislative and governance frameworks, and the broad range of policy and management issues associated with building, maintaining and restoring robust social-ecological systems at regional scales.
The primary format of contributions are research articles, presenting new evidence from analyses of empirical data or else more theoretical investigations of regional environmental change. In addition to research articles, we also publish editorials, short communications, invited mini-reviews on topics of strong current interest, as well as special features that provide multifaceted discussion of complex topics or particular regions