Space Technologies for Enhancing the Resilience and Sustainability of Indigenous Reindeer Husbandry in the Russian Arctic

In response to the major changes taking place across the Arctic climatic, environmental, economic, social, industrial there is an increasing need for improved land cover/land use change information, especially remotely sensed data, by indigenous reindeer herders on the characterization of pasture quality and migratory routes, such as vegetation distribution, snow cover, infrastructure development, and pasture damages due to fires. This paper describes some of the remote sensing capabilities useful for reindeer husbandry and preliminary results of the first year of a project, “Reindeer Mapper”, a remote sensing and GIS-based system to bring together space technologies with indigenous knowledge for improved mapping of parameters critical to sustainable reindeer husbandry.