Like lemmings

Winter lasts nine months here. And Central Euro-peans would shudder at what is considered summer in this region. Storms reach wind speeds of up to 260 km/h and on calm days, swarms of mosquitoes make being outside for longer periods of time torture. The north-eastern coast of Greenland, which is one of the Earth’s most extreme landscapes, is home to the world’s largest national park. With a total area of 956700 km², it is bigger than France and the UK combined.

Here at the Arctic Circle, we researchers are dependent on our technical equipment being able to function reliably, even in extreme weather conditions.

The so-called fjord region is situated in the south of the national park. It is known for its small and large islands in between fjords cut deep into the sometimes-steep rock faces. The Karupelv Valley Project has been running here since 1988. It is based at the University of Freiburg and overseen by the French Arctic Ecology Research Group (GREA) under the leadership of Dr Benoît Sittler. This long-term research project aims to identify the causes of lemming cycles, which is still a highly debated phenomenon in science but nevertheless an important ecological issue. For the approach chosen here, researchers attempted to record the population dynamics of the lemmings and that of the predators dependent on the lemmings. The dynamics of the lemming population has been investigated every year since 1988 based on the winter nests in a 1500 ha area. The predators, who mainly exercise their influence in snow-free summer, are recorded by researchers who map their breeding (snowy owl and skua) or check their dens (Arctic fox).

MINOX provides trail cameras and camera traps to gather this data. This equipment is used to monitor the nests of ground-nesting birds and to observe the behaviour of Arctic foxes and snowy owls. The expedition team is only on site for a few weeks. Using trail cameras allows them to continue their watch throughout the rest of the year. This puts the cameras through their paces. The lowest temperature at which the camera was still triggered was -27°C. The ambient temperatures are at times much lower, but animals are not likely to be passing by at this point. The observations made over the past ten years now indicate changes that could be linked to climate change. The lack of spikes in the lemming population has a direct impact on the predators’ young, who are reliant on the lemmings. As a result, over the past ten years only one single breeding pair of snowy owls has been registered (in comparison to a total of around 50 breeding pairs for the period from 1988-1999). The realities of climate change, whose consequences on the ecosystem are only now being documented through these kinds of long-term studies, are also the focus of the current continuation of the project.