The majority of reindeer grazing land is under cumulative pressures

Reindeer herding has a long history in Northern Norway, Sweden and Finland. It has shaped the Fennoscandian mountain landscape and is also seen as a means of mitigating the effects of climate change on vegetation. Yet a new study published in Scientific Reports shows that most of this grazing land is exposed to cumulative pressures, threatened by the expansion of human activities northwards.

The grazing land in the north of Fennoscandia is increasingly disturbed by cumulative pressures on land use. Intensive forestry, outdoor tourism, road and rail traffic, as well as mining and wind farms are developing in the north. The newly published study has mapped and estimated the overall magnitude of these cumulative pressures, along with other stressors, namely the presence of predators and climate change.

Previous studies focused mainly on the regional scale, but here the authors used an integrated large-scale GIS analysis across three countries: Norway, Sweden and Finland. Their results suggest that approximately 60% of the region is exposed to multiple pressures and 85% is exposed to at least one pressure. This drastically reduces the size and quality of the summer grass area. The study found that only 4% of the area is still undisturbed.

“In the north of Fennoscandia, we are fortunate to still have one of the oldest herding systems in Europe, where reindeer roam freely in over 40% of Norway, Sweden and Finland. Or at least they used to. presence on multiple fronts threatens the resilience of the northern livestock industry,” said Marianne Stoessel, lead author of the study, and Ph.D. student at Stockholm University.

It is not new that there are many tensions in this region. Reindeer herders, policy makers and also the scientific community studying reindeer ecology are well aware of these problems.

“What’s new is the fact that we’ve finally managed to get an overview of this pressure across the area. This wasn’t easy, as the different land uses operate at different scales and can be very dynamic, just as the predators, and the effects of climate change on grazing,” says Marianne Stoessel.

“Grazing is an important process for the conservation of plant biodiversity, even in the mountains. So it was important for us to study the magnitude of this cumulative pressure, taking into account the summer pastures, where grazing takes place,” says Professor Regina Lindborg, Stockholm. University, co-author of the study and coordinator of the research project.

Due to the high degree of cumulative pressure on the region and due to climate change, this study suggests a high risk of vegetation and landscape change in the future, leading to a concentration of grazing in less disturbed areas and encroachment on trees and shrubs in disturbed ones.

The study is part of the research project entitled “The interacting effects of land-use and global warming on the grazing lands of Northern Fennoscandia.”