TVERS: Drivers of change in circumpolar tundra ecosystems (TUNDRA)

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Sustainable management of ecosystems requires understanding about drivers that causes changes in ecosystems and services. Surprisingly little is known about effective management strategies under different socioeconomic conditions and governance regime. On e reason may be that ?Managerial approaches? fail to see the social causes behind ecosystem changes that would have been better understood by an integrated analysis of anthropogenic and biophysical drivers. The circumpolar tundra ecosystem is a good model system for integration analyses of drivers, because of the strong spatial contrast in anthropogenic drivers, whereas the basic ecosystem properties (e.g., structure of the trophic web) are comparable. We devise a spatial ecosystem analysis, which uses th e contrasts in environmental governance and socioeconomic conditions (indirect drivers) to draw statistical interferences about the effect of endogenous drivers (i.e. land use, pollution and resource exploitation) on ecosystems and services. We focus on e ndogenous drivers which could be managed by the circumpolar governance regimes, but interactions with exogenous drivers such as climate and the global economy need to be controlled for as they may introduce substantial changes in tundra ecosystems. The pr oject is divided in three stages. First, the indirect-and direct driver relationship is explored. How the use of regulations/NEPI, property rights and civil participation, as well as the economic and human development is related to direct drivers is inves tigated. Second, a selection of municipalities, based on contrasts in direct drivers, allows analyses of the effects on ecosystem transitions/states and on services. We concentrate on local resource dependency to measure ecosystem services. Third, we inte grate all analyses to answer the major questions. Statistical analyses rely on portifolio approaches, and include multi-level/hierarchical analyses, meta-analyses, fuzzy sets, and qualitative comparative analyses.