TrophicMap

The main hypothesis of this project is that wild and domestic ungulates are key drivers of the vegetation responses to climatic changes. In turn, ungulates are not independent of the environment (climate) and primary productivity. Therefore, interactions between climate, vegetation and herbivores occur in several ways and simultaneously, determining grazing patterns, vegetation conditions (resistance and resilience) and movements of the main consumers of livestock (other than humans): The scavenger specialists.

Study’s methodological framework. Our datasets include satellite images to obtain climate and plant productivity/biomass information on the landscape scale, along with field data of ungulate abundance and breeding success. We used a Bayesian model to bridge the NDVI data gaps in the time series and to evaluate the relative importance of climate factors on plant productivity/biomass. We then used a second Bayesian modelling approach to understand the relative importance of the top-down and bottom-up controls in the climate–plant–herbivore interactions. We finally evaluated the influence of exotic ungulates on climate–vegetation temporal oscillation.