Genetic Sources of Resistance To Potato Blackleg Soft Rot Caused by Dickeya dianthicola

Solanum tuberosum L. is the world\u27s most important non-cereal food crop, capable of producing more food per land unit on less water than any other crop. Only rice, wheat, and maize are produced in larger quantities than potato. The potato tuber, a modified stem turned storage organ is nutrient dense and a staple in diets across the world. The potato crop is expected to grow and contribute significantly to the global food supply. However, potato production has increasingly been threatened by unfavorable environmental conditions, and susceptibility to pest and disease. Perhaps the most famous of all the Irish Potato Famine caused by the oomycete Phytophthora infestans. Constraints on potato production through abiotic and biotic factors have been tackled through crop improvement or breeding programs. As a tetraploid crop, the potato breeding cycle can take many years from conception to variety release. This process takes on average,10 years to complete. This lengthy breeding cycle does not mean that traditional potato breeding is unsuccessful, simply resource intensive. Due to the demands on available resources caused by potato breeding cycles, some pest and pathogen resistances may not be incorporated into commercial germplasm, which is further influenced by the amount of pressure the pathogen exerts annually on the potato crop. The tetraploid nature of the crop and the ease of which tubers can be obtained and shipped has led to a vegetative propagation system for seed tubers. Although regulated through certification programs, diseases are still able to penetrate these proactive cultural practices as was the case in, 2015 when there was an outbreak of Dickeya dianthicola struck the Northeast potato growing regions in the U.S. and quickly spread throughout the country because of limited control measures. A recently released variety from the University of Maine Breeding Program, Caribou Russet, was shown to have tolerance to potato blackleg and soft rot (PBSR) caused by Dickeya dianthicola strain ME30. In this work, an effective Dickeya dianthicola isolate ME30 culturing method and inoculation workflow is established to repeatedly and reliably phenotype for the potato blackleg soft rot resistance phenotype. Using this workflow and a population of primary dihaploid Caribou Russet, the underlying genetic source of tolerance observed at the tetraploid state is sought. This work provides a workflow to enable reliable means of phenotyping PBSR resistance in Caribou Russet, as well as incorporating and identifying PBSR resistance into future germplasm for potato breeding. Potato haploid induction holds promise in revitalizing the industry through implementation of a true potato seed system via a diploid potato breeding system. Potato haploid induction also allows researchers to investigate the genetics of agronomically important traits in a setting with less complex epistatic effects, and simpler segregation ratios. By leveraging haploid induction crosses in the cultivated potato, the underlying genetic sources of tolerance to PBSR infection can be mined from the potato genome. Dickeya dianthicola isolate ME30 characterization resulted in the creation of a linear regression model which describes the relationship of optical density at 600nm to the estimated colony forming units per milliliter of culture, as well as the identification of an optimal inoculum concentration at which to vacuum infiltrate tubers for disease phenotyping. Subsequent validation of this workflow occurred during the disease phenotyping experiment on a population of primary dihaploid Caribou Russet. These data were then used for QTL mapping. QTL mapping revealed no significant QTL. Nonetheless, a peak was detected along chromosome 6 aligning with previous published literature on PBSR resistance. Thus, suggesting that there is an underlying genetic source of resistance within the primary dihaploid Caribou Russet gene pool

Dynamics of pastoral traditional ecological knowledge : a global state-of-the-art review

Traditional ecological knowledge enables pastoralists to cope with social-ecological changes, thereby increasing thesustainability of their practices and fostering social-ecological resilience. Yet, there is a significant knowledge gap concerning the extentto which pastoral traditional ecological knowledge has changed over time at the global level. We aim to fill this gap through a systematicliterature review of 288 scientific studies on pastoral traditional ecological knowledge. We reviewed 152 papers in detail (selectedrandomly from the 288) for their content, and focused specifically on 61 papers that explicitly mentioned one of the four types ofknowledge transition (i.e., retention, erosion, adaptation, or hybridization). Studies on pastoral traditional knowledge represent lessthan 3% of all the scholarly literature on traditional ecological knowledge. Geographical distribution of the 288 case studies was largelybiased. Knowledge domains of pastoral knowledge such as herd and livestock management, forage and medicinal plants, and landscapeand wildlife were relatively equally covered; however, climate-related knowledge was less often studied. Of the 63 papers that explicitlymentioned transition of pastoral traditional ecological knowledge, 52 reported erosion, and only 11 studies documented explicitlyknowledge retention, adaptation, or hybridization of traditional knowledge. Thus, adaptation and hybridization was understudied,although some case studies showed that adaptation and hybridization of knowledge can efficiently help pastoralists navigate amongsocial-ecological changes. Based on the review, we found 13 drivers which were mentioned as the main reasons for knowledge transitionamong which social-cultural changes, formal schooling, abandonment of pastoral activities, and transition to a market economy weremost often reported. We conclude that future research should focus more on the diverse dynamics of pastoral traditional knowledge,be more careful in distinguishing the four knowledge transition types, and analyze how changes in knowledge impact change in pastoralpractices and lifestyles. Understanding these phenomena could help pastoralists' adaptations and support their stewardship of theirrangeland ecosystems and biocultural diversity.Peer reviewe

HOMUNCULUS Bearing Incorporeal Arcticulations

This dissertation studies ‘the Arctic in Change’. In contrast to a traditional research setting, its aim is to engage with questions that respond to both ‘the Arctic’ and ‘in Change’ as preformed answer and outcome. Since ‘the Arctic’ is not constituted by a single definition, mode, science, art, discipline, method, state, continent, image, symbol, instance, agent or unit, it is considered and treated with the means and matters of bricolage in the spirit of post-qualitative inquiry. Accordingly, this approach requires involvement from a multiplicity of theoretical, methodological and research material: the intra-actions of performativity theory, the genealogy of discursive material practices, studies on perception, visual culture, aesthetics and ethics, art & design, ecology and ethology, as well as the politics residing in them. Furthermore, the recognition of the partiality, influence and agency of the elements constituting this study beyond the rationalised and controlled research design requires a more fluid manner of writing, deriving from the ideals of writerly and open text, infused with inter- and intratextuality and co-conducted in phenomenological writing to produce a novel conduct in avoiding firm structuring and hierarchy while pursuing open-ended objectives. The analysis begins by compromising the cohesion of Arctic representations as objects with unaltered identities, exhibiting a diorama of a polar bear. The seemingly neutral and passive object occupies several inherited subject positions that emerge from it as material outcomes. The representation holds the capacity to record the audience’s corporeality through sensory and motoric traces and to perform through their bodies as fixed prepositions. The encounter endangers and re-establishes the participatory subject and object positions as co- and counter to each other. How representations are conducted is foremost a question of the manipulation of distance, which proceeds from aesthetics to epistemological and ontological conditions. Different characteristics emerge, disappear, become manageable or are in reach depending on their distance, which is defined as the relationship between the point of perception and the perceived. Attempts to overcome this distance with various scientific technologies and artistic techniques are inevitably influenced by what comes in-between. To penetrate the distance with direct bodily engagements for the purpose of Arctic investigation, is an act limited to the ontology of the knowing body. In order to perform under the natural and cultural environmental conditions related to the Arctic, the body is contained and reproduced as non-Arctic with specific material arrangements within the research vessel, from labour to recovery, to maintain it as a societal human subject. These discursive–material arrangements constitute the human body through an incorporeal–animal binary, constructed within the equipment of ergonomics and exercise inherited from agriculture and industrialisation. When the same adjustment, human–animal, is conducted in micro-space, it is transferred into the colonial project of discipline and cultivation as a rectilinear school: it emerges as an invasive species in the regional circular ‘ecology’ and as cultural violence towards the landscape that is formed by seasonal and regional movement that happens in circles, conducting the livelihood and the identity of the People. The reading and rewriting of the landscape, as well as the history and memory of the bodies within it, do not place these human–animal binaries beneath one another, but rather within an act of performative restructuring. While certain iconic animals, are considered representatives of the Arctic region, in the animal activist’s attempt to speak for the other, to witness animal subjectivity with documentary techniques and technologies, they do not succeed in ethically mediating or negotiating the subjectivity of the animal-other as such. Such technique produces a hybrid subjectivity of the human, animal and recording technology combined that also fails to free itself from the weight of the genealogy of the human–animal relations of trapping, hunting, slaughter and putting on display. While problematising the capability to engage with the animal subject as an animal, the study further indicates the ‘small other’ taking place in subject–object encounters, restating ‘in-between’ as ‘in-the-midst’. The human–animal relation contained in an artefact, and its capacity to contain and surface such genealogies, is finally studied in the context of contemporary political debate on the use, meaning and matter of the inuksuit, communities building and enacting stone figures erected traditionally by the Inuit for various purposes. While the inuksuit have been adopted by the national state with its colonial practices towards the indigenous peoples, the inukshuk re-emerges as a re-establishment of identity and power over life and region, natural, social and political bodies. The questions throughout the thesis suggest that ‘the Arctic’ is not accessible or returnable as the ‘truth’; it is not capable to exist in the Lacanian Real, resisting all definitions and relations. It is composed in linguistic, imaginary and symbolic manner and matter as a figuration ‘arcticulated’ into an entity existing only ‘in Change’. This entity is to be expressed with a figure that bends and reads in multiple modes. The Arctic is therefore a bearing in which one can dwell as a human being, where this being owes and invests itself in an intra-face, named a ‘homunculus’, a transferring and conducting of human characteristics. The outcomes ought to enable radical and critical thinking towards the ‘taken for granted’ truths of the Arctic as an object of inquiry through established metatheoretical conceptualisations. The ‘homunculus’ is offered as a guide for understanding the forms and matters of politics on the issue in a new way in order to have an impact on political science and beyond.Väitöskirjan tutkimuskohteena on ”Arktinen muutoksessa”. Perinteisesti tutkimuskysymyksestä johdettavan tutkimusasetelman sijaan tutkimuskohteen osat ”Arktinen” ja ”muutoksessa” tulkitaan ennakko-olettamina, tutkimusvastauksina, jolloin tutkimustavoitteeksi syntyy näihin lopputulemiin johtavien tutkimuskysymysten löytäminen. Koska Arktinen ei koostu yhdestä määritelmästä, modaliteetista, tieteen- tai taiteenalasta, oppiaineesta, metodista, valtiosta, mantereesta, kuvasta, symbolista, tilanteesta, toimijasta tai yksiköstä, käsitellään sitä brikolaasina jälkilaadullisen tutkimuksen hengessä. Lähestymistapa edellyttää useiden erilaisten teoreettisten, metodologisten ja tutkimusaineistollisten lähtökohtien hyödyntämistä performatiivisuusteoriasta genealogiaan, havainnon, visuaalisen kulttuurin, estetiikan, etiikan ja taiteen tutkimukseen, ekologiasta eläinten käyttäytymistieteeseen, sekä niiden poliittisen luonteen tunnistamiseen. Tavoitteen saavuttaminen edellyttää tiukasti kontrolloitua tutkimusasetelmaa ja raportointia joustavampaa kirjoittamistapaa, liikkuen fenomenologisesta kirjoittamisesta ja avoimesta tekstistä, intertekstuaalisuuteen ja intratekstiin, välttäen tutkimusta rajoittavia rakenteita ja hierarkioita, uudenlaisten sisältöjen ja avointen lopputulosten tuottamiseksi. Tutkimusanalyyttinen matka alkaa Arktisen representaatioiden koheesion ja identiteetin muuttumattomuuden kyseenalaistamisella. Tiedekeskuksen jääkarhudiorama ymmärretään performatiivisena artefaktina, joka ilmeisen neutraalina ja passiivisena esillepanona sisällyttää joukon polveutuvia subjektipositioita ja materiaalisia voimasuhteita. Jääkarhun representaatiolla on kapasiteetti tallentaa yleisön ruumiillisuus sensorisina ja motorisina jälkinä, ja liikuttaa yleisöään prepositioihin, asemoiden subjektin ja objektin tietynlaiseen keskinäissuhteeseen. Representaatioiden tuottamisessa on keskeisesti kysymys etäisyyden manipuloinnista, edeten estetiikasta, epistemologisiin ja ontologisiin kysymyksiin. Eri piirteet ilmaantuvat, katoavat, tulevat hallittaviksi tai tavoitettaviksi riippuen etäisyydestä eli suhteesta havaitsijan ja havainnoitavan välillä. Yritykset ylittää etäisyys tieteen käyttämien teknologioiden sekä taiteellisten tekniikoiden avulla tuottavat välittävän ja väliin tulevan tason, josta tulee erottamaton osa havainnoitavaa kohdetta. Yritys ylittää etäisyys Arktiseen suoran kehollisen kontaktin keinoin rajoittuu väistämättä tietävän kehon ontologiaan. Kuten tutkimusaluksella, Arktisen luonto- ja kulttuuriympäristössä suoriutuva keho on säilötty ja uudelleentuotettu ei-arktisena erityisillä materiaalisilla järjestelyillä ja tekniikoilla, säilyttääkseen inhimillisen kehon länsimaiseen yhteiskuntaan sovitettavana. Ihmiskehoa tukeva eläinten hyötykäytöstä liikkumisessa sekä maatalouden ja teollisuuden voimansiirrossa. Näin ollen ihmiskehoa muokkaavat diskursiivismateriaaliset käytännöt rakentuvat ihmisen ja eläimen yhdistävästä teknologisesta suhteesta, jossa eläimen ruumiillisuus on muutoin poissaolevana. Kun ihmisen ja eläimen agraarisesta suhteesta syntyvä mikro-tilallinen rakennekaava siirretään osaksi koloniaalista koulutusta ja kurinpitoa, ilmenee kultivointi suorakaiteenmuotoisena kouluympäristönä. Lineaarisuus ja suorakulmaiset muodot toimivat vieraslajin tavoin vaarantaen alueellisen kehällisen ekologian, toimien kulttuurisena väkivaltana kehällisen ja kausittaisen liikkeen muodostamaa maisemaa kohtaan, joka liittyy erottamattomana osana luontaiselinkeinoihin ja alueelliseen ryhmäidentiteettiin. Maiseman lukeminen ja uudelleenkirjoittaminen, ja sen sisältämien kehojen historia ja muisti, eivät aseta eläin-ihmis binaarin osapuolia toisilleen alisteisiksi, vaan keskinäiseen performatiiviseen suhteeseen. Tiettyjen ikonisten eläinten, kuten poron, tunnistetaan edustavan Arktista aluetta. Eläinaktivistiset yritykset todistaa eläimen subjektiivista kokemusta eri dokumentointitekniikoiden ja teknologioiden välittämänä epäonnistuvat todentamaan eläimen kokemuksen eettisesti. Kyseiset tekniikat tuottavat eläimen sijaan hybridisen subjektiviteetin koostuen ihmisen, eläimen ja tallentavan teknologian yhdistelmästä, joka ei onnistu vapautumaan tappamisen genealogiastaan, kuten ansapyynnistä, metsästyksestä, teurastuksesta ja voitonmerkeistä. Eläimen subjektiviteetin autenttisen esittämisen problematiikka paljastaa ”pienen toisen” läsnäolon subjektin ja objektin välisessä suhteessa, jolloin suhteen tarkastelu “toista” kohtaan muuttuu välisestä keskiseksi. Ihmisen ja eläimen suhteen genealogian tallentuminen artefaktiin, joka toimii niin säilönä kuin esiintulopintana, tutkitaan lopuksi osana poliittista debattia koskien Kanadan Inuiitti- yhteisöjen eri tarkoituksiin perinteisesti kivistä pystyttämien inuksuk-hahmojen käyttöä ja merkitystä. Inukshuk edelleen toimii maisemallisesti alkuperäiskansaan kuuluvia ihmisiä toisiinsa, elinkeinoonsa, sekä ympäristönsä eläimistöön konkreettisesti sitovana sosiaalisen ja poliittisena ruumiina, samalla kun kansallisvaltio on kolonisoinut sen käyttöä. Kysymykset läpi tutkielman johtavat ymmärrykseen että ”Arktinen” ei avaudu tai palaudu ”totuudeksi” Lacanilaisessa ymmärryksessä, jossa ”Todellinen” vastustaa kaikkia määritelmiä ja suhteellistuksia. Arktinen koostuu lingvistisestä, kuvitteellisesta, kuvallisesta ja symbolisesta hahmotelmasta, joka on ”arktikuloitu” olevaksi vain ”muutoksesssa”. Tämän kokonaisuuden voi ilmaista hahmolla, joka taipuu ja on luettavissa eri modaliteeteissa. Arktinen on siten asema ja suuntima, jossa voidaan säilyä ihmisinä, investoiden siihen oman inhimillisen jälkensä ’homunculuksen’. Tutkimustuloksen on tarkoitus mahdollistaa radikaali ja kriittinen tapa ajatella Arktista totuudellisuutta, joka on ”otettu annettuna”, kehitettyjen metateoreettisten konseptien avulla. Homunculus toimii oppaana ymmärrykseen arktisen poliittisuudesta, uudistaen käsityksiämme yli politiikkatieteen rajojen

Contested energy spaces. Disassembling energyscapes of the Canadian North

For decades, extractive industry developments have had direct and indirect impacts on indigenous communities in Wood Buffalo, Alberta, Canada. Yet, in a seemingly paradoxical manner and despite massive negative attention, there are several indigenous communities in favour of industrial developments on their traditional lands. To investigate this paradox, I embarked on an exploration of the contested energy space of the Canadian oil sands—investigating and analysing the characteristics, governance and power plays therein. In this PhD research project, I investigated how to conceptualize the socio-material complexity of contested energy spaces in the Canadian north, to identify instability and potential for change within them, and to understand the power relations between industry, state and indigenous communities. Hence, the overall effort of this PhD transcends the apparently narrow issue of indigenous responses to industrial impact, touching upon larger, more complex and generic problematics of energy and society relations. Employing qualitative, Grounded Theory Methods (GTM) on a variety of scales, I present the research in two theoretically focused papers and two more empirically grounded ones. In paper #1, I discuss how to conceptualize the sociomaterial complexity of contested energy spaces. In this paper, by employing assemblage theory, I identify contested energy spaces as complex places or situations. I argue that to analyse and understand these complex situations, we need to equip assemblage theory with acknowledged geographical concepts of place (and materiality), scale (and networks) and power (as the mobilization of resources), providing analytical categories and tools for geographers investigating contested energy spaces specifically, and hopefully also contributing to the ongoing scholarly discourse on place. Furthermore, in paper #2, I investigate how to identify instability and potential for change in contested energy spaces. Building on my initial reflections in paper #1, I elaborate on the instabilities of contested energy spaces, underscoring that instead of talking about techno-institutional complexes, regimes or a coherent systemic “fossil capitalism” held together by co-articulation of institutions, infrastructures and practices, we can talk about a looser association of different social and material elements drawn together and pulled apart by a range of different forces. I argue that this is liberating because it frees us from the assumption that changes need to have an impact on the fundamentals of larger socio-technical regimes to be significant. For me, the important point is to illustrate that contested energy spaces are fragmented, contested and converted at particular sites. Therefore, contradicting those who suggest that assemblage thinking blunts critical sensibilities, I find in paper #2 that it is helpful in opening spaces for negotiation and contestation. I argue that there is a normative rationale for shifting researchers’ attention towards instability and change. Destabilizing the permanence of contested energy spaces may be productive in its own right. The emphasis on structural constraints runs the risk of reproducing the oil industry’s carefully scripted narrative of its own inevitability. It is critical that the specific lens that spatiality affords geographers is also used to identify the cracks in the wall and the leverage points for transformation. Papers #3 and #4 discuss how to understand the power play between industry, the state and indigenous communities in the contested energy spaces of the Canadian north, but from two perspectives, or on different scales. On a macro scale (paper #3), I show that industrial activities have had great impacts on the social, cultural and environmental realities of the contested energy spaces. The burden has been substantial for local communities and has added to the prolonged historical conflict between the Crown and indigenous communities over rights and entitlements. This complex relationship has led to substantial challenges for all stakeholders. In response to these challenges, the federal duty to consult, along with provincial environmental impact assessments (EIAs) and locally negotiated impact benefits agreements (IBAs), has been delegated to industry, where corporate social responsibility (CSR) and stakeholder management form important centrepieces. This delegation has been legitimized on pragmatic grounds, to underscore the better positioning of industry to consult indigenous communities, to assess its own impact and to negotiate compensation and benefits agreements. I have identified an interrelated, nested and multiscalar governance structure emerging from these four distinct governance features (Consultations, EIAs, IBAs, and CSR) that can be viewed as a joint mobilization effort by government, extractive industry proponents and indigenous communities to realize a workable, win–win regulatory environment in the contested energy space of Wood Buffalo. On a micro scale (paper #4), the indigenous communities calibrate their participation in the emerging governance processes in the contested energy space of Wood Buffalo to strengthen their negotiating power. In this paper, I take assemblage theory as the basis of an analytical framework to examine indigenous Métis communities in Wood Buffalo. I reveal that indigenous engagement with extractive industry development is neither static nor (only) responsive in character. Rather, indigenous communities are strategic pragmatists that creatively and proactively engage in the development of extractive industries in their traditional territories. Viewing the interactions between the component parts of the contested energy space of Wood Buffalo as the workings of an unstable and changeable assemblage reconfigures our interpretation of indigenous engagement; we no longer see the people as passive victims or as only responsive to external pressure; we now see indigenous communities as proactive, pragmatic component parts of the Wood Buffalo carbonscape. I show that through strategic pragmatism, their traditional ways of life are imbued with substantial transformative capabilities. In paper #4, I show that these capabilities have moved the Métis communities of Wood Buffalo into formalized alliances with other stakeholders striving to evolve and change, to harvest strategic resources to their benefit. Hence, by approaching my main research question through these four papers, I have eventually reached some conclusions: the indigenous communities of this study favour high-impact industrial activities in their traditional territories for several specific reasons. First, the complexity exposed in contested energy spaces does not offer simplistic or conventional understandings of indigenous agency. Second, the governance innovations of the contested energy space of Wood Buffalo entail different and untraditional approaches by which different stakeholders seek benefits from a highly lucrative industrial adventure. Third, by underscoring the instability of contested energy spaces and their constituent parts, I show that indigenous communities are no less adaptable or pragmatic than other stakeholders, and they strive to evolve and change to harvest strategic resources for their betterment

Greening the Maple

Ecocriticism can be described in very general terms as the investigation of the many ways in which culture and the environment are interrelated and conceptualized. Ecocriticism aspires to understand and often to celebrate the natural world, yet it does so indirectly by focusing primarily on written texts. Hailed as one of the most timely and provocative developments in literary and cultural studies of recent decades, it has also been greeted with bewilderment or scepticism by those for whom its aims and methods are unclear. This book seeks to bring into view the development of ecocriticism in the context of Canadian literary studies. Selections include work by Margaret Atwood, Northrop Frye, Sherrill Grace, and Rosemary Sullivan

Reindeer Husbandry and Global Environmental Change

This volume offers a holistic understanding of the environmental and societal challenges that affect reindeer husbandry in Fennoscandia today. Reindeer husbandry is a livelihood with a long traditional heritage and cultural importance. Like many other pastoral societies, reindeer herders are confronted with significant challenges. Covering Norway, Sweden and Finland – three countries with many differences and similarities – this volume examines how reindeer husbandry is affected by and responds to global environmental change and resource extraction in boreal and arctic social-ecological systems. Beginning with an historical overview of reindeer husbandry, the volume analyses the realities of the present from different perspectives and disciplines. Genetics, behavioural ecology of reindeer, other forms of land use, pastoralists’ norms and knowledge, bio-economy and governance structures all set the stage for the complex internal and externally imposed dynamics within reindeer husbandry. In-depth analyses are devoted to particularly urgent challenges, such as land-use conflicts, climate change and predation, identified as having a high potential to shape the future pathways of the pastoral identity and productivity. These futures, with their risks and opportunities, are explored in the final section, offering a synthesis of the comparative approach between the three countries that runs as a recurring theme through the book. With its richness and depth, this volume contributes significantly to the understanding of the substantial impacts on pastoralist communities in northernmost Europe today, while highlighting viable pathways to maintaining reindeer husbandry for the future. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of both the natural and social sciences who work on natural resource management, global environmental change, pastoralism, ecology, social-ecological systems, rangeland management and Indigenous studies

Impasses of the Post-Global: Theory in the Era of Climate Change, Vol. 2

The diverse materials comprising Impasses of the Post-Global take as their starting point an interrelated, if seemingly endless sequence of current ecological, demographic, socio-political, economic, and informational disasters. These include the contemporary discourses of deconstruction, climate change, ecological imbalance and despoilment, sustainability, security, economic bailout, auto-immunity, and globalization itself. With essays by James H. Bunn, Rey Chow, Bruce Clarke, Tom Cohen, Randy Martin, Yates McKee, Alberto Moreiras, Haun Saussy, Tian Song, Henry Sussman, Samuel Weber, Ewa P. Ziarek, and Kryzsztof Ziarek

Reindeer Husbandry and Global Environmental Change

This volume offers a holistic understanding of the environmental and societal challenges that affect reindeer husbandry in Fennoscandia today. Reindeer husbandry is a livelihood with a long traditional heritage and cultural importance. Like many other pastoral societies, reindeer herders are confronted with significant challenges. Covering Norway, Sweden and Finland – three countries with many differences and similarities – this volume examines how reindeer husbandry is affected by and responds to global environmental change and resource extraction in boreal and arctic social-ecological systems. Beginning with an historical overview of reindeer husbandry, the volume analyses the realities of the present from different perspectives and disciplines. Genetics, behavioural ecology of reindeer, other forms of land use, pastoralists’ norms and knowledge, bio-economy and governance structures all set the stage for the complex internal and externally imposed dynamics within reindeer husbandry. In-depth analyses are devoted to particularly urgent challenges, such as land-use conflicts, climate change and predation, identified as having a high potential to shape the future pathways of the pastoral identity and productivity. These futures, with their risks and opportunities, are explored in the final section, offering a synthesis of the comparative approach between the three countries that runs as a recurring theme through the book. With its richness and depth, this volume contributes significantly to the understanding of the substantial impacts on pastoralist communities in northernmost Europe today, while highlighting viable pathways to maintaining reindeer husbandry for the future. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of both the natural and social sciences who work on natural resource management, global environmental change, pastoralism, ecology, social-ecological systems, rangeland management and Indigenous studies