Herbivory Network workshop: Emerging priorities in terrestrial herbivory research in the Arctic

Activity Report

After 10 years of contributing to circumpolar research on plant-herbivore interactions, the Herbivory Network is using a horizon scan to identify research priorities in Arctic herbivory for the coming decade. As part of this process, the Herbivory Network organized a one-day in-person workshop, as a pre-conference activity, parallel to the Nordic Society Oikos conference held in Lund, March 12-15, 2024.

During the workshop, participants worked on refining the emerging themes and determining key action points for Arctic herbivory research in the next decade, based on feedback received from Arctic herbivory experts through an online survey. You can find more information about the project here.

The workshop was organized by Isabel C Barrio (Agricultural University of Iceland), Stefaniya Kamenova (University of Oslo) and Helen Anderson (University of Aberdeen). Registration for the workshop was open through the portal of the NSO conference, ensuring a broader participation than from network members alone. A total of 26 researchers participated in the workshop, many of them early career scientists. The Herbivory Network workshop was organized as part of the activities of the Nordic Oikos Society conference 2024 held in Lund. The workshop took place in the Ecology Building of the University of Lund.

During the workshop a strong emphasis was placed on hands-on work and discussions, first in smaller groups, and then in the larger groups to try to reach consensus on the suggestions presented by the smaller groups. In the morning session, a brief introduction of the project was given by Isabel C Barrio, and workshop participants introduced themselves. Participants were split into four groups (5-8 participants each), led by Isabel C Barrio, Stefaniya Kamenova, Mathilde Defourneaux and Laura Barbero-Palacios. All groups were provided with a list of 146 questions compiled from the input received from the online surveys. The online surveys took place before the workshop, and included an initial elicitation of input by Arctic herbivory researchers, where researchers were asked to provide up to 5 questions they thought would be relevant in Arctic herbivory research in the coming decade. In a second step, after deduplicating questions and cleaning the database, researchers were asked to score the questions in terms of two criteria: their scientific relevance and their relevance to management. The list of questions provided to workshop participants was ranked based on this online scoring, and the top 25% for each criterion (scientific and management) were retained for further discussion. The groups were tasked with synthesizing the top-ranked questions in each criterion.

In the afternoon session, the four groups came back together to share and discuss their suggested synthesis. After the workshop, the conclusions have been summarized in a paper now published in Arctic Science.

The Herbivory Network (HN) is an international collaborative research initiative. Since its establishment in 2014, the HN has worked towards addressing the role of herbivory in Arctic and alpine ecosystems and developing new approaches to harmonise research efforts. The goal of HN is to foster collaborations within and across disciplines, facilitate multi-site comparisons, and work towards understanding the complexity and variability of responses of tundra ecosystems to herbivory. The Herbivory Network was endorsed as a UArctic Thematic Network in 2020.

This project has been endorsed by the International Arctic Science Committee as an ICARP IV activity. Funding to support the participation of early career scientists in this workshop has been made available by the Terrestrial Working Group of the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC). Many of the discussions held during the meeting contribute to the TUNDRAsalad project (grant nr. 217754), funded by the Icelandic Research Fund.

Three Highlights

• After 10 years of contributing to circumpolar research on plant-herbivore interactions, the Herbivory Network used a horizon scan to identify research priorities in Arctic herbivory for the coming decade.
• A one-day workshop was organized in Lund on March 12 2024, parallel to the activities of the Nordic Society Oikos conference, and was attended by 26 researchers from seven Arctic countries and in different career stages.
• The legacy of the workshop, in the form of a scientific publication that identifies the top priorities for arctic herbivory research in the coming decade, represents a contribution to the ICARP IV.

Summary of input provided for the ICARP IV process

We collected nearly 300 suggestions from 85 experts through online surveys and an in-person workshop. After analyzing their responses, we identified eight key scientific priorities and eight key management priorities.These priorities emphasise the need to deepen our understanding about the ecological role of herbivores and their interactions, from small-scale local interactions to broader changes over time in the landscapes where herbivores and humans coexist. Learning more about how herbivores both respond to and influence climate change, including their role in feedback loops that could speed up or slow down climate warming, represents another priority area. Moreover, herbivory researchers highlighted the need for new, improved tools and methods to better study and monitor these complex and remote ecosystems, while making scientific data quickly accessible to everyone. Finally, improving the ways to combine scientific and Indigenous knowledge was also identified as an important priority. Our work offers a roadmap for future research and collaboration. By bringing together scientists, Indigenous knowledge holders, and decision-makers, we can develop better ways to study and manage Arctic herbivores and help ensure the health of these ecosystems for generations to come. The outcomes of this horizon scanning exercise have been published in Arctic Science.

Recommendations for priorities in Arctic research for the coming decade

We identified 8 scientific and 8 management priorities for Arctic herbivory research in the next decade. These priorities centred on: a) understanding and integrating fundamental ecological processes across multiple scales from individual herbivore-plant interactions up to regional and decadal scale vegetation and animal population effects; b) evaluating climate change feedbacks; and c) developing new research methods. Our analysis provides a strategic framework for broad, inclusive, interdisciplinary collaborations to optimise terrestrial herbivory research and sustainable management practices in a rapidly changing Arctic.

Recommendations for the implementation of the suggested priorities

The upcoming Fifth International Polar Year in 2032-33 will provide considerable motivation for planning and developing new research initiatives on Arctic herbivores. Such research initiatives should include coordinated ecosystem-based and circumpolar efforts that incorporate diverse knowledge systems into future research programs. It will be important to match the current state-of-knowledge and emerging technology with the quickly changing dynamics of many Arctic herbivores and the environmental changes occurring in tundra ecosystems. Addressing these priorities will require developing new methods and inclusive, interdisciplinary collaborations. Including diverse research communities and management bodies are both prerequisites for effective cross-domain knowledge sharing and adoption. In terms of facilitating and enhancing the interface between science and management, we are hopeful that our horizon scan research prioritization will help to create and sustain informal “communities of practice”, for example through the Herbivory Network (http://herbivory.lbhi.is) or independently. These efforts will also enable periodic updates of this horizon scan, complemented with the additional insights from diverse stakeholders.

[Text extracted from Barrio et al 2025: https://cdnsciencepub.com/doi/10.1139/as-2024-0080]

Main Organiser

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (Agricultural University of Iceland); Herbivory Network

Type of Activity

• Workshop

Dates and Locations

• 12 - 15 March 2024 in Lund, Sweden