Long-term Interactions between Migratory Caribou, Wildfires and Nunavik Hunters Inferred from Tree Rings
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Barren-ground caribou (Rangifer tarandus) herds in North America may reach considerable size and undertake large-scale seasonal migrations from the Arctic tundra to the boreal forest. To test the caribou decline hypothesis associated with native harvesting and fire, we have documented the long-term trends of caribou activity based on a novel approach which uses tree-ring dated trampling scars produced by caribou hooves in the extensive trails distributed over the summer and winter ranges of the Rivièreaux-Feuilles herd (RAF herd, east of Hudson Bay in northern Quebec). The age structure data of trampling scars from lichen woodlands distributed over the entire RAF range confirmed the overall trends of caribou activity from the late 1700s to present time. Over the last 200 years, the RAF herd has undergone two highs in the late 1700s and 1900s separated by a moderate activity pattern in the late 1800s. Native harvesting was possibly involved in the early 1900s decline, although at a moderate level. The reduced magnitude of caribou activity during this period has not modified the natural cycle of highs and lows, which suggests that other demographic factors were controlling the changing caribou abundance. Our data also show that only exceptionally large fires may have a minor, short-lived impact on caribou migrations but not on caribou numbers.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 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 teacher head, 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".