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Yamal Nenets herders have historically developed a rich knowledge of lichens and vascular plants, which feature in the diet of their migratory reindeer herds in the tundra zone of northwest Siberia. In the Nenets language there are native names for certain species of lichens and other reindeer forage plants, including graminoids, herbs, shrubs, berries, and mushrooms. During participant fieldwork together with nomadic tundra Nenets herders, we documented names and definitions of reindeer food on herding territories during their long migration routes from the northern forest-tundra transition zone to the northern coastal tundra. Like many other Indigenous peoples of Siberia, Nenets have noticed that the Arctic is changing and some of its recent dynamics are seriously affecting their livelihood. The degradation of some lichen composition and cover on tundra pastures has also contributed to a decrease of herders’ linguistic palette for describing these losses in a concrete manner. Since the Nenets language is on the list of endangered languages of the world, this has an especially negative impact on the language skills and traditional knowledge of the younger generations of Nenets people, who may not know what these lichens look like and why they are important for the Nenets reindeer herding culture. 

Abstract Nenets reindeer pastoralists of Yamal in the Russian Arctic, successfully deal with rapidly changing climate and natural gas industrialization. We present results from our long-term ethnographic study (2001–present) on the adaptive strategies that Nenets nomadic households have employed over time, their tradeoffs, inherent risks, and social implications of these strategies. While some strategies limit the adaptive flexibility of herding, they simultaneously enable agency that keeps Nenets households on the land—critical for maintaining their nomadism. Rapid climate change in the Arctic, which could lead to increased icing of pastures, makes reindeer herding more vulnerable. We examine meteorological data from Yamal to better understand the climatic trends challenging reindeer nomadism. Our analysis is relevant for policymakers through understanding Nenets adaptation and interactions with ecological processes and institutions. 

Nenets reindeer pastoralists on the Yamal Peninsula of the Russian Arctic have demonstrated success in dealing with rapidly changing climatic conditions and the growing built environment associated with the natural gas industry. We pair our observations of a set of 28 Nenets households with hydrometeorological data to better understand the challenges of reindeer nomadism in this time of unprecedented change. We assembled a data set based on our ethnographic work with reindeer herding households beginning in 2001 through 2022, following 28 households at irregular intervals. The source of these data include surveys, participant observation, and digital communication. For this analysis we extracted information and coded variables for: reindeer herd size, migration distances, locations of summer and winter camps, annual frequency of camp movement, changes in migration patterns, and reasons for choice of migration route. These data were combined with relevant weather parameters derived from the ERA5 reanalysis data product for the immediate areas (30 kilometer (km) grid) surrounding summer and winter camps. We conducted a Bayesian logistic regression using the brms package in R Statistical Software (v4.1.2) analyzing factors contributing to ‘change’ or ‘no change’ in migration routes. Five ERA5 climate variables representing summer heating and winter warming and rain on snow (ROS) events were z-score normalized. Year of observation was treated as a factor. Posterior distribution of climate variables showed no discernable effects on household migration decisions. 

Abstract Science, engineering, and society increasingly require integrative thinking about emerging problems in complex systems, a notion referred to as convergence science. Due to the concurrent pressures of two main stressors—rapid climate change and industrialization, Arctic research demands such a paradigm of scientific inquiry. This perspective represents a synthesis of a vision for its application in Arctic system studies, developed by a group of disciplinary experts consisting of social and earth system scientists, ecologists, and engineers. Our objective is to demonstrate how convergence research questions can be developed via a holistic view of system interactions that are then parsed into material links and concrete inquiries of disciplinary and interdisciplinary nature. We illustrate the application of the convergence science paradigm to several forms of Arctic stressors using the Yamal Peninsula of the Russian Arctic as a representative natural laboratory with a biogeographic gradient from the forest‐tundra ecotone to the high Arctic. 

Abstract Reindeer, called caribou in North America, has a circumpolar distribution and all extant populations belong to the same species (Rangifer tarandus). It has survived the Holocene thanks to its immense adaptability and successful coexistence with humans in different forms of hunting and herding cultures. Here, we examine the paternal and maternal history ofRangiferbased on robust Y‐chromosomal and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) trees representing Eurasian tundra reindeer, Finnish forest reindeer, Svalbard reindeer, Alaska tundra caribou, and woodland caribou. We first assembled Y‐chromosomal contigs, representing 1.3 Mb of single‐copy Y regions. Based on 545 Y‐chromosomal and 458 mtDNA SNPs defined in 55 males, maximum parsimony trees were created. We observed two well separated clades in both phylogenies: the “EuroBeringian clade” formed by animals from Arctic Islands, Eurasia, and a few from North America and the “North American clade” formed only by caribou from North America. The time calibrated Y tree revealed an expansion and dispersal of lineages across continents after the Last Glacial Maximum. We show for the first time unique paternal lineages in Svalbard reindeer and Finnish forest reindeer and reveal a circumscribed Y haplogroup in Fennoscandian tundra reindeer. The Y chromosome in domesticated reindeer is markedly diverse indicating that several male lineages have undergone domestication and less intensive selection on males. This study placesR. tarandusonto the list of species with resolved Y and mtDNA phylogenies and builds the basis for studies of the distribution and origin of paternal and maternal lineages in the future.