Florian Stammler

University of Lapland · Arctic Centre

Reindeer, called caribou in North America, has a circumpolar distribution and all extant populations belong to the same species (Rangifer tarandus). It has survived the Holocene thanks to its immense adaptability and successful coexistence with humans in different forms of hunting and herding cultures. Here, we examine the paternal and maternal his...

Plain Language Summary This paper represents a synthesis of conceptual analyses, case study analyses, and practical thoughts on the application of convergence science in Arctic change studies. During a virtual workshop in 2020, a diverse, multi‐national team of authors consisting of social scientists, engineers, earth system scientists, and ecologi...

Background The drastic change in global climate has led to in-depth studies of the genetic resources of native cattle adapted to challenging environments. Native cattle breed data may harbor unique variants that will enable the generation of new tools to improve the adaptation potential of commercial cattle breeds. Adipose tissues are key factors i...

Domestic reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) play a vital role in the culture and livelihoods of indigenous people across northern Eurasia. These animals are well adapted to harsh environmental conditions, such as extreme cold, limited feed availability and long migration distances. Therefore, understanding the genomics of reindeer is crucial for improvin...

Background The drastic change in global climate has led to in-depth studies of the genetic resources of native cattle adapted to challenging environments. Native cattle breed data may harbor unique variants that will enable the generation of new tools to improve the adaptation potential of commercial cattle breeds. Adipose tissues are key factors i...

Semi-domestic reindeer play a vital role in the culture and livelihoods of indigenous people across the northern Eurasia. These animals are well adapted to harsh environmental conditions, such as extreme cold, limited feed availability and long migration distances. Therefore, understanding the genomics of reindeer is crucial for improving their man...

Many small remote cities in the circumpolar North lose population. Our starting point is that such settlements have a viable future when young people see perspectives for their own well-being there. This article studies such perspectives using cases from northern Russia and northern Finland, based on empirically grounded fieldwork. Emphasising cont...

This contribution takes a longue durée perspective of 20 years to the transformation of spiritual ways of knowing the land. The ways in which Nenets people in the Russian Arctic display or hide their relations with the spirits from incomers have changed over time, due to a number of outside influences, but also to relations of trust between the aut...

Reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) are semi-domesticated animals adapted to the challenging conditions of northern Eurasia. Adipose tissues play a crucial role in northern animals by altering gene expression in their tissues to regulate energy homoeostasis and thermogenic activity. Here, we perform transcriptome profiling by RNA sequencing of adipose tis...

This book is a groundbreaking collection of essays that provides an original and internationally framed conception of the historical, theoretical, and ethnographic interconnections of law and anthropology. Each of the chapters in the Handbook provides a survey of the current state of scholarly debate and an argument about the future direction of re...

Reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) are semi-domesticated animals adapted to the challenging arctic conditions of northern Eurasia. Adipose tissues play a crucial role in animals living in northern environments by altering gene expression in their tissues to regulate energy homeostasis and thermogenic activity. Here, we performed transcriptome profiling b...

The Arctic Environmental Responsibility Index (AERI) covers 120 oil, gas, and mining companies involved in resource extraction north of the Arctic Circle in Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Finland, Norway, Russia, and Sweden. It is based on an international expert perception survey among 173 members of the International Panel on Arctic Environmental Res...

This article illustrates how the Yamal‐Nenets, a group of reindeer pastoralists in West Siberia, perceive a series of recent natural disasters to be connected to one another through a conspiracy – i.e. caused by the agency of malevolent human forces which are beyond the pastoralists’ control. Recent fieldwork during the peak of the global Covid‐19...

State-region relations involve negotiations over the power to (re)-constitute local spaces. While in federal states, power-sharing ostensibly gives regions a role over many space-making decisions, power asymmetries affect this role. Where centralization trends may erode regional agency, law can provide an important tool by which regions can assert...

Climate change is a major challenge to Arctic and other Indigenous peoples, but not the only and often not the most pressing one. We propose re-framing the treatment of climate change in policy and research, to make sure health, poverty, education, cultural vitality, equity, justice, and other topics highlighted by the people themselves and not jus...

Many indigenous peoples in the Arctic have a longer experience of engaging with its resources than Russians or other peoples who have their own states. What are the governance approaches of these people to the natural resources and their territories, and in what ways do these approaches differ from each other? In this article, we analyse the relati...

Industry in the twenty-first century advances to ever-remoter regions, seen as ‘periphery’ from the point of view of headquarters and capital cities, while for local people these areas are the core of their world. This article investigates the encounter between communities, regulatory authorities and industry in the Russian Arctic. Using cases from...

Temperature is increasing in Arctic and sub-Arctic regions at a higher rate than anywhere else in the world. The frequency and nature of precipitation events are also predicted to change in the future. These changes in climate are expected, together with increasing human pressures, to have significant impacts on Arctic and sub-Arctic species and ec...

Data source and sampling method of reindeer abundance time series. (DOCX)

Number of years of available population abundance (N) and period of available data (Y, years) for each of the 19 reindeer populations we analyzed. (DOCX)

Pearson correlation coefficient values indicating synchrony among reindeer population growth rates. (DOCX)

The Arctic remains of great interest for extractive industry development, despite fluctuating mineral and hydrocarbon prices, and the technological and political challenges of accessing these resources. The articles in this special section explore the realities of living close to extractive industries in the Arctic; the expectations surrounding ext...

This article analyses the phenomenon of the post-Soviet Russian summer cottage, dacha, in the Arctic. We take an ethnographic comparative perspective for contributing to the refinement of our understanding of human-environment relations and urban anthropology of incomer-northerners, those with roots somewhere outside the north. Evidence from fieldw...

Hydrocarbon exploration has been underway in the north of West Siberia for several decades. Giant gas fields on the Yamal Peninsula are expected to begin feeding the Nord Stream pipeline to Western Europe in late 2012. Employing a variety of high- to very high-resolution satellite-based sensors, we have followed the establishment and spread of Bova...

Histories from the North turns research in the Arctic and sub-Arctic on its head by focusing on the perceptions of the environment, movements, and narratives of the inhabitants of the Circumpolar North. The North has been inhabited for millennia. One of the goals of the BOREAS program was to create dialogue between local inhabitants and scientific...

In comparison with other Arctic regions, Russia s Arctic is considerably more densely populated. This is the result of a population policy that served industrialisation first and foremost. In the Soviet Union, deportations, subsidised resettlements, and the sedentarisation of nomads were the instruments of this policy. Today, Russia is pursuing oth...

The Yamal Peninsula in northwest Siberia is undergoing some of the most rapid land-cover and land-use changes in the Arctic due to a combination of gas development, reindeer herding, and climate change. Unusual geological conditions (nutrient-poor sands, massive ground ice and extensive landslides) exacerbate the impacts. These changes will likely...

Snow conditions play an important role for reindeer herding. In particular, the formation of ice crusts after rain-on-snow (ROS) events or general surface thawing with subsequent refreezing impedes foraging. Such events can be monitored using satellite data. A monitoring scheme has been developed for observation at the circumpolar scale based on da...

The capacity of satellite imagery to detect anthropogenic impacts on land cover was assessed for the Bovanenkovo gas field on the Yamal Peninsula in northwest Siberia, which contains some of the world’s largest untapped gas deposits. The region is also the homeland of nomadic Nenets reindeer herders, whose annual migration between the tree line and...

Short term thawing of the snow surface and subsequent refreeze can lead to the formation of ice crusts. These events are related to specific meteorological conditions such us rain-on-snow events and/or temporary increase of air temperature above zero degree Celsius. The structure change in the snow pack has adverse effect especially on wild life an...

Тhis volume introduces international and Russian research on the adaptation of the (incomer) population of northern Siberia. The book developed out of a jointly organised international conference in Novy Urengoy, West Siberia by NII – Research Institute for Problems of Development of Education under Sub-polar Conditions at the Urals Branch of the R...

Good to Eat, Good to Live with: Nomads and Animals in Northern Eurasia and Africa / edited by Florian Stammler, Hiroki Takakura. 2010 (Northeast Asian Study Series 11)

Tundra ecosystems are vulnerable to hydrocarbon development, in part because small-scale, low-intensity disturbances can affect vegetation, permafrost soils, and wildlife out of proportion to their spatial extent. Scaling up to include human residents, tightly integrated arctic social-ecological systems (SESs) are believed similarly susceptible to...

In this paper we explore how Western scientific concepts and attitudes towards indigenous knowledge, as they pertain to resource management and climate change, differ from the prevailing view in modern Russia. Western indigenous leaders representing the Inuit and Saami peoples are actively engaged in the academic and political discourse surrounding...

This contribution looks at the influence of technological change thatnomads in the Russian North have undergone, using as examples two crucial innovations: the snowmobile and the mobile phone. I argue that the snowmobile did not have the same revolutionary impact on the Russian tundra as it did in Fennoscandia, for reasons connected to long distanc...

The Yamal Peninsula in northwest Siberia is undergoing some of the most rapid land-cover and land-use changes in the Arctic due to a combination of gas development, reindeer herding, and climate change. Unusual geological condi-tions (nutrient-poor sands, massive ground ice and extensive landslides) exacerbate the impacts. These changes will likely...

This article analyses the development of relations between indigenous communities, oil companies and the state in Russia's Nenets Autonomous Okrug (NAO). Using first hand information from anthropological fieldwork and one co-author's own involvement in regional politics, we analyse efforts to establish stakeholder dialogue. We show that ‘collective...

Reindeer husbandry represents a major land use in the Barents region, and has been predicted to be adversely affected by climate change. This paper considers the likely response of reindeer husbandry to changes both in climate and in socio-economic circumstances in the four countries of the Barents region from 1990 to 2080. Key natural factors incl...

The human-animal relationship, especially human-reindeer relationship, plays a significant role in the development and practice of all forms of pastoralism. Reindeer pastoralism is practiced by nomads representing the cultural diversity of the circumpolar border, without which the continuous presence of humans in the severe cold environment would b...

This introduction provides an overview of academic research and current practice relating to stakeholder dialogue around oil and gas development in the Russian North, Siberia and the Russian Far East. We discuss the two main strands of analysis in this special issue: (a) regulation and impact assessment; and (b) relationship-building in practice, w...

The aim of the study is to assess the capacity for satellite imagery in detecting different natural and anthropogenic land cover types in the vicinity of a modern petroleum extraction development in the Russian Arctic. The Yamal Peninsula in northwest Siberia contains some of the largest untapped deposits known in the world. It also serves as the h...

'Humans and Reindeer on the Move' is the first volume of Nomadic Peoples to be dedicated entirely to nomadic livelihoods connected to reindeer (Rangifer tarandus). Reindeer pastoralism is practised in a large region across the circumpolar rim, by communities that represent the rich cultural diversity of the Arctic and Subarctic. These communities a...

Velvet antlers, in Russian "panty",1 have a long tradition as a medicine in Asia. According to old Chinese sources, the extract of velvet antlers "re- duces hot temperedness, dizziness, strengthens male kidneys and testacles, cures involuntary ejaculation of male semen during sexual intercourse with a ghost during the sleep" (quoted in Iudin 1993:3...