Impacts of Arctic Climate and Land Use Changes on Reindeer Pastoralism: Indigenous Knowledge and Remote Sensing

Eurasian indigenous reindeer herders have developed an important initiative to study the impacts of climate change and to develop local adaptation strategies based upon their traditional knowledge of the land and its uses – in an international, interdisciplinary partnership with the science community – involving extensive collaborations and co-production of knowledge to minimize the impacts of the various changes. This unprecedented reindeer herder-led initiative is the IPY EALAT Project, “EALAT, Reindeer Pastoralism in a Changing Climate”. This chapter provides an overview of the EALAT initiative, with an emphasis on how remote sensing, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and other scientific data are being combined with indigenous knowledge to “co-produce” datasets to improve decision-making and herd management; some early results; and a description of the EALAT/Monitoring data integration and sharing system and portal being developed for reindeer pastoralism to integrate traditional indigenous knowledge together with remote sensing and other scientific data to enhance early warning and management for change responses and adaptation.