Winter habitat selection by caribou in relation to lichen abundance, wildfires, grazing, and landscape characteristics in northwest Alaska
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Lichens are an important winter forage for large, migratory herds of caribou (Rangifer tarandus granti) that can influence population dynamics through effects on body condition and in turn calf recruitment and survival. We investigated the vegetative and physiographic characteristics of winter range of the Western Arctic Herd in northwest Alaska, one of the largest caribou herds in North America. We made 3 broad comparisons: habitats used by caribou versus random locations, burned versus unburned habitats, and habitats within the current winter range versus those in the historic winter range and potential winter ranges. We found that lichen abundance was more than 3 times greater at locations used by caribou than found at random. The current winter range does not appear to be overgrazed as a whole, but continued high grazing pressure and consequences of climate change on plant community structure might degrade its condition. Within the current winter range, lichen abundance was more than 4 times greater at unburned locations than at recently (< 58 y) burned locations. Other than lichen abundance, there were few vegetative differences between burned (mean = 37 ± 1.7 y) and unburned locations. The historic winter range has low lichen abundance, likely due to sustained grazing pressure exerted by the herd, which suggests that range deterioration can lead to range shifts. Recovery of this range may be slowed by continued grazing and trampling during migration of caribou to and from their current winter range, as well as by high wildfire frequency and other consequences of climate change. The area identified as potential winter range is unlikely to be utilized regularly by large numbers of caribou primarily due to low lichen abundance associated with extensive deciduous stands, large areas of riparian habitat, high moose (Alces alces) densities, and greater prevalence of wildfire. Our results suggest that lichens are important in the overwintering ecology of caribou that face the energetic costs of predator avoidance and migration.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".