Compound hazards of climate change, forestry, and other encroachments on winter pasturelands: a storyline approach in a forest reindeer herding community in Northern Sweden

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.

Automated summary

The impacts of climate change on rural cultures and livelihoods are influenced by the complex biophysical processes that alter people's land use practices. This study found that the detrimental effects of climate change and encroachments on winter forage availability for reindeer herding in Northern Sweden were amplified by specific forestry practices and infrastructure. The results highlight the importance of ecological interventions to address local concerns, while policy inaction poses a threat to the desired human-animal relations in the landscape.