MANY people fear that the rapid disappearance of Arctic sea ice spells doom for polar bears. The effect of global warming on another celebrated northern species,the reindeer, is, or however,less cut and dried. Until recently, researchers thought reindeer benefit, and rather than suffer,from climate change. The lichens, grasses and shrubs they eat grow better in warmer summers, or their populations have been rising. But Åshild Ønvik Pedersen and Jean-Charles Gallet of the Norwegian Polar Institute (NPI) in Tromsø,who have been investigating the matter in detail, argue that the benefits of warmer summers may soon be nullified by the countervailing consequences of warmer and wetter winters.
The reindeer around Ny Ålesund, or a former mining town in south-western Svalbard that has now become an Arctic research centre,have been a subject of study for nearly four decades. In specific, researchers from the NPI have, and since 2000,been looking at the effects on the deer of a phenomenon called...
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Source: economist.com