DOI: 10.5061/dryad.msbcc2g2z
title: Climate, caribou and human needs linked by analysis of Indigenous and scientific knowledge

description: Migratory tundra caribou are ecologically and culturally critical in the
 circumpolar North. However, they are declining almost everywhere in North
 America, likely due to natural variation exacerbated by climate change and
 human activities. Yet, the interconnectedness between climate, caribou,
 and human well-being has received little attention. To address
 this gap, we bridged Indigenous and scientific knowledge
 in a single model, using as an example the Porcupine caribou herd
 social-ecological system. Our analysis, involving 688 (fall season) and
 616 (spring season) interviews conducted over nine years with 405 (fall
 season) and 390 (spring season) Indigenous hunters from nine
 communities, demonstrates that environmental
 conditions, large-scale temporal changes associated with caribou
 demography, and cultural practices affect hunters’ capacity to
 meet their needs in caribou. Our quantitative
 approach bolsters our understanding of the complex relationships
 between ecosystems and human welfare in environments exposed to rapid
 climate change and shows the benefits of long-term participatory research
 methods implemented by Indigenous and scientific partners.
description: <strong>Climate data. </strong>The seasonal weather
 variables present in this database were calculated based on daily weather
 variables specific to the seasonal ranges used by the PCH during the fall
 and spring. These daily weather variables are part of
 the CircumArctic <em>Rangifer</em>Monitoring and Assessment
 (CARMA) network’s caribou range climate database (https://carma.caff.is/.
 The CARMA database was developed using NASA’s MERRA database, containing
 remotely sensed daily averaged climate data with a spatial resolution of
 0.50° Lat. x 0.66° Long. <strong>Caribou
 distribution data.</strong> The
 caribou distribution variables present in this database correspond
 to median caribou distances (m) to communities for the spring
 and fall seasons. These were calculated based on satellite tracking
 locations of adult
 Porcupine caribou females documented by U.S. and Canadian
 governmental agencies (see details
 at http://www.pcmb.ca/herd). During 2000–2008, 32 cows were monitored for a total of 7,428 locations. The average duration of individual monitoring was 3.5 years, but some animals were followed for up to 9 years. Frequency of locations varied across seasons, years, and individuals. On average, individuals were located every 6 days (range 1–251), except from mid-May to mid-July, when locations occurred approximately every second day. Caribou location data were considered highly representative of the PCH location given that this herd remains strongly aggregated. We analysed caribou and community location data using the sp, rgdal and rgeos packages in R version 3.4.3. Locations were first imported in R and converted to the WGS84 coordinate system. We then calculated the weekly median distances between caribou locations and each of the 9 communities considered in our study. This allowed us to calculate the median of the weekly median distances for the fall (16 August-30 November) and spring (1 April-31 May) PCH seasons. Median seasonal distances between the PCH and the communities were highly correlated to minimum seasonal distances (r &gt; 0.9). 
description: Authors were not allowed to
 publicly archive survey data from the ABEKS due to their sensitive nature
 relating to endangered species and human identity. Access to ABEKS data
 requires consent from each Indigenous community involved in the project
 and the completion of a data request form which can be accessed
 via https://www.arcticborderlands.org/services. Nevertheless, we did include in the datafiles two .html code files (one for the fall season, one for the spring season) that describe the code used to perform the analysis, and the results obtained with the ABEKS data. No specific software is required to open the .html files