Oil and Gas Development in Reindeer Pastures of Northern Eurasia: Impacts and Solutions

Rapid oil and gas development plus climate change and variability are increasingly creating major changes in the physical environment, ecology, and cultures of the indigenous reindeer herder communities in the Arctic. To define the nature and extent of these impacts as well as to develop adaptation strategies, researchers from the IPY EALAT Project, together with remote sensing partners, have been developing a qualitative and quantitative assessment of multi-spectral information from remote sensing combined with indigenous data in a GIS environment where impacts of oil and gas infrastructure development can be shown and mapped as it directly impacts reindeer pastures and migration routes. Direct observations and data are being integrated with indigenous historical knowledge and recent observations from herders' data logs. This paper summarizes results of these recent studies in Eurasia, which combine remote sensing data with indigenous observations of changes over the past 30 years. A series of cloud-free Landsat scenes between 1972 and 2007 show dramatic development of oil and gas related infrastructure (e.g., drill pads, roads, building sites) across the grazing and migration routes. Sami reindeer herder indigenous knowledge and observations from these areas have been combined with local GIS data, documenting in situ infrastructure and vegetation changes to assess local impacts. These results have then been combined with estimates of projected future changes in development and climate such as increases in oil and gas infrastructure and associated personnel, overall environmental impacts, and climate-related changes of local ecosystems to create longer-term predictions of potential adaptation strategies and solutions for local reindeer herder communities in these areas.