Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Letter
  • Published:

Vole and lemming activity observed from space

Nature Climate Change volume 2, pages 880–883 (2012)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Predicting the impacts of present global warming requires an understanding of the factors controlling plant biomass and production. The extent to which they are controlled by bottom-up drivers such as climate, nutrient and water availability, and by top-down drivers such as herbivory and diseases in terrestrial systems is still under debate1. By annually recording plant biomass and community composition in grazed control plots and in herbivore-free exclosures, at 12 sites in a subArctic ecosystem, we were able to show that the regular interannual density fluctuations of voles and lemmings drive synchronous interannual fluctuations in the biomass of field-layer vegetation. Plant biomass in the field layer was between 12 and 24% lower the year after a vole peak than the year before, and the combined vole and lemming peaks are visible as a reduced normalized difference vegetation index in satellite images over a 770 km2 area in the following year, despite the wide range of abiotic, biotic and anthropogenic forces that influence the vegetation2,3,4,5. This strongly suggests that the cascading effect of rodents for the function and diversity of tundra plant communities needs to be included in our scenarios of how these ecosystems will respond to environmental changes.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: Microtine rodent densities, plant biomass in grazed control plots and NDVI estimated from satellite images fluctuated with three-year cycles in the Abisko region in northern Sweden between 1998 and 2011.
Figure 2: The rodent cycles drive cycles in plant biomass and NDVI.
Figure 3: Plant biomass of the dominant plant species in grazed control plots (red, triangles) and herbivore-free exclosures (blue, dots) between 1998 and 2011.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Terborgh, J., Holt, R. D. & Estes, J. A. in Trophic Cascades: Predators, Prey and the Changing Dynamics of Nature (eds Terborgh, J. & Estes, J. A.) Ch. 1, 1–18 (Island, 2010).

    Google Scholar 

  2. Bokhorst, S. F. et al. Winter warming events damage sub-Arctic vegetation: Consistent evidence from an experimental manipulation and a natural event. J. Ecol. 97, 1408–1415 (2009).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Post, E. & Pedersen, C. Opposing plant community responses to warming with and without herbivores. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 105, 12353–12358 (2008).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  4. Walker, M. D. et al. Plant community responses to experimental warming across the tundra biome. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 103, 1342–1346 (2006).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  5. Babst, F., Esper, J. & Parlow, E. Landsat TM/ETM plus and tree-ring based assessment of spatiotemporal patterns of the autumnal moth (Epirrita autumnata) in northernmost Fennoscandia. Remote Sens. Environ. 114, 637–646 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Post, E. et al. Ecological dynamics across the Arctic associated with recent climate change. Science 325, 1355–1358 (2009).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  7. Shaver, G. R. et al. Species composition interacts with fertilizer to control long-term change in tundra productivity. Ecology 82, 3163–3181 (2001).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Aunapuu, M. et al. Spatial patterns and dynamic responses of arctic food webs corroborate the exploitation ecosystem hypothesis (EEH). Am. Nat. 171, 249–262 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Van Bogaert, R. et al. A century of tree line changes in sub-Arctic Sweden show local and regional variability and only minor role of 20th century climate warming. J. Biogeogr. 38, 907–921 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Johnson, D. R. et al. Exclusion of brown lemmings reduces vascular plant cover and biomass in Arctic costal tundra: Resampling of a 50+ year herbivore exclosure experiment near Barrow, Alaska. Environ. Res. Lett. 6, 045507 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Ericson, L. The influence of voles and lemmings on the vegetation in a coniferous forest during a 4-year period in northern Sweden. Wahlenbergia 4, 1–114 (1977).

    Google Scholar 

  12. Emanuelsson, U. Ecological Effects of Grazing and Trampling on Mountain Vegetation in Northern Sweden PhD thesis, Lund Univ. (1985).

  13. Olofsson, J., Hulme, P. E., Oksanen, L. & Suominen, O. Importance of large and small mammalian herbivores for the plant community structure in the forest–tundra ecotone. Oikos 106, 324–334 (2004).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Kalela, O. Seasonal change of the habitat in the Norwegian lemming, Lemmus lemmus. Ann. Acad. Sci. Fenn. 55, 1–72 (1961).

    Google Scholar 

  15. Turchin, P. & Batzli, G. O. Availability of food and the population dynamics of arvicoline rodents. Ecology 82, 1521–1534 (2001).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Tikhomirov, B. A. Relationship of the Animal World and the Plant Cover of the Tundra (Russian Academy of Science, 1951).

    Google Scholar 

  17. Moen, J., Lundberg, P. A. & Oksanen, L. Lemming grazing on snowbed vegetation during a population peak, northern Norway. Arctic Alpine Res. 25, 130–135 (1993).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Ims, R. A., Henden, J. A. & Killengreen, S. T. Collapsing population cycles. Trends Ecol. Evol. 23, 79–86 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Kausrud, K. K. et al. Linking climate change to lemming cycles. Nature 456, 93–98 (2008).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  20. Dahlgren, J. et al. Plant defenses to no avail? Responses of plants of varying edibility to food web manipulations in a low arctic scrubland. Evol. Ecol. Res. 11, 1189–1203 (2008).

    Google Scholar 

  21. Tast, J. & Kalela, O. Comparisons between rodent cycles and plant production in Finnish Lapland. Ann. Acad. Fenn. A, IV Biologica 186, 1–14 (1971).

    Google Scholar 

  22. Laine, K. & Henttonen, H. The role of plant production in microtine cycles in northern Fennoscandia. Oikos 40, 407–418 (1983).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Jepsen, J. U. et al. Monitoring the spatio-temporal dynamics of geometrid moth outbreaks in birch forest using MODIS–NDVI data. Remote Sens. Environ. 113, 1939–1947 (2009).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Olofsson, J., Ericson, L., Torp, M., Stark, S. & Baxter, R. Carbon balance of Arctic tundra increased snow cover mediated by a plant pathogen. Nature Clim. Change 1, 220–223 (2011).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  25. Olofsson, J. et al. Herbivores inhibit climate-driven shrub expansion on the tundra. Glob. Change Biol. 11, 1205–1216 (2009).

    Google Scholar 

  26. Walker, D. A. et al. Spatial and temporal patterns of greenness on the Yamal Peninsula, Russia: Interactions of ecological and social factors affecting the Arctic normalized difference vegetation index. Environ. Res. Lett. 4, 1–16 (2009).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Van Wijk, M. T. & Williams, M. Optical instruments for measuring leaf area index in low vegetation: Application in arctic ecosystems. Ecol. Appl. 15, 1462–1470 (2005).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Bhatt, U. S. et al. Circumpolar Arctic tundra vegetation change is linked to sea ice decline. Earth Interact. 14, 1–20 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to staff at Abisko Scientific Research Station for their assistance in making this study possible. We thank L. Oksanen for discussions. The work was financially supported by the Nordic Centre of Excellence—Tundra, the European Commission (ENV4-CT97-0586), the Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Science and Spatial Planning to J.O. (2006-1539) and T.V.C. (214-2008-188 and 214-2009-389) and the Research Council of Norway to H.T. (216434/E10).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Ecology and Environmental Science, Umeå University, SE-901 87 Umeå, Sweden

    Johan Olofsson

  2. Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA), Fram—High North Research Centre for Climate and the Environment, N-9296 Tromsø, Norway

    Hans Tømmervik

  3. Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield, Western Bank, Sheffield S10 2TN, UK

    Terry V. Callaghan

  4. Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, 104 05 Stockholm, Sweden

    Terry V. Callaghan

Authors
  1. Johan Olofsson
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Hans Tømmervik
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Terry V. Callaghan
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

J.O. managed the long-term herbivore exclosure experiment and carried out plant measurements in the field. H.T. carried out the image processing and the NDVI estimations from satellite images. J.O. carried out the statistical analyses and wrote the manuscript, to which all authors contributed with discussions and text.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Johan Olofsson.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Olofsson, J., Tømmervik, H. & Callaghan, T. Vole and lemming activity observed from space. Nature Clim Change 2, 880–883 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1537

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1537

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing