Habitat use and population dynamics of brown bears (Ursus arctos) in Scandinavia

Large carnivore populations are currently recovering from past extirpation efforts and expanding back into their original habitats. At the same time human activities have resulted in very few wilderness areas left with suitable habitats and size large enough to maintain populations of large carnivores without human contact. Consequently the long-term future of large carnivores depends on their successful integration into landscapes where humans live. Thus, understanding their behaviour and interaction with surrounding habitats is of utmost importance in the development of management strategies for large carnivores. This applies also to brown bears (Ursus arctos) that were almost exterminated from Scandinavia and Finland at the turn of the century, but are now expanding their range with the current population estimates being approximately 2600 bears in Scandinavia and 840 in Finland. This thesis focuses on the large-scale habitat use and population dynamics of brown bears in Scandinavia with the objective to develop modelling approaches that support the management of bear populations. Habitat analysis shows that bear home ranges occur mainly in forested areas with a low level of human influence relative to surrounding areas. Habitat modelling based on these findings allows identification and quantification of the potentially suitable areas for bears in Scandinavia. Additionally, this thesis presents novel improvements to home range estimation that enable realistic estimates of the effective area required for the bears to establish a home range. This is achieved through fitting to the radio-tracking data to establish the amount of temporal autocorrelation and the proportion of time spent in different habitat types. Together these form a basis for the landscape-level management of the expanding population. Successful management of bears requires also assessment of the consequences of harvest on the population viability. An individual-based simulation model, accounting for the sexually selected infanticide, was used to investigate the possibility of increasing the harvest using different hunting strategies, such as trophy harvest of males. The results indicated that the population can sustain twice the current harvest rate. However, harvest should be changed gradually while carefully monitoring the population growth as some effects of increased harvest may manifest themselves only after a time-delay. The results and methodological improvements in this thesis can be applied to the Finnish bear population and to other large carnivores. They provide grounds for the further development of spatially-realistic management-oriented models of brow bear dynamics that can make projections of the future distribution of bears while accounting for the development of human activities.

Glacial Survival of Boreal Trees in Northern Scandinavia

It is commonly believed that trees were absent in Scandinavia during the last glaciation and first recolonized the Scandinavian Peninsula with the retreat of its ice sheet some 9000 years ago. Here, we show the presence of a rare mitochondrial DNA haplotype of spruce that appears unique to Scandinavia and with its highest frequency to the west—an area believed to sustain ice-free refugia during most of the last ice age. We further show the survival of DNA from this haplotype in lake sediments and pollen of Trøndelag in central Norway dating back ~10,300 years and chloroplast DNA of pine and spruce in lake sediments adjacent to the ice-free Andøya refugium in northwestern Norway as early as ~22,000 and 17,700 years ago, respectively. Our findings imply that conifer trees survived in ice-free refugia of Scandinavia during the last glaciation, challenging current views on survival and spread of trees as a response to climate changes.

Response to Comment on "Glacial Survival of Boreal Trees in Northern Scandinavia"

Birks et al. question our proposition that trees survived the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) in Northern Scandinavia. We dispute their interpretation of our modern genetic data but agree that more work is required. Our field and laboratory procedures were robust; contamination is an unlikely explanation of our results. Their description of Endletvatn as ice-covered and inundated during the LGM is inconsistent with recent geological literature.

Molecular- and pollen-based vegetation analysis in lake sediments from central Scandinavia

Plant and animal biodiversity can be studied by obtaining DNA directly from the environment. This new approach in combination with the use of generic barcoding primers (metabarcoding) has been suggested as complementary or alternative to traditional biodiversity monitoring in ancient soil sediments. However, the extent to which metabarcoding truly reflects plant composition remains unclear, as does its power to identify species with no pollen or macrofossil evidence. Here, we compared pollen-based and metabarcoding approaches to explore the Holocene plant composition around two lakes in central Scandinavia. At one site, we also compared barcoding results with those obtained in earlier studies with species-specific primers. The pollen analyses revealed a larger number of taxa (46), of which the majority (78%) was not identified by metabarcoding. The metabarcoding identified 14 taxa (MTUs), but allowed identification to a lower taxonomical level. The combined analyses identified 52 taxa. The barcoding primers may favour amplification of certain taxa, as they did not detect taxa previously identified with species-specific primers. Taphonomy and selectiveness of the primers are likely the major factors influencing these results. We conclude that metabarcoding from lake sediments provides a complementary, but not an alternative, tool to pollen analysis for investigating past flora. In the absence of other fossil evidence, metabarcoding gives a local and important signal from the vegetation, but the resulting assemblages show limited capacity to detect all taxa, regardless of their abundance around the lake. We suggest that metabarcoding is followed by pollen analysis and the use of species-specific primers to provide the most comprehensive signal from the environment. © 2013 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Scandinavia and its confines, in which are the Kingdoms of Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, divided into their principall provinces viz. Under the crown of Sweden, those of Gothland, Sweden, Lapland, Finland, Ingria, and Livonia; Under the crown of Denmark, those of Jutland, Sleswick, Zealand, Fyonie, &c. In Denmark those of Agger, Dronthem, and Wardhous, in Norway /

1 kartta :, käsinvär. ;, 56,4 x 86,7 cm, lehti 62,5 x 91,5 cm

The ship as symbol in the prehistory of Scandinavia and south-east Asia

The ship is the dominant element in the visual culture of the South Scandinavian Bronze Age, appearing in several different media, including rock carvings, decorated metalwork and above-ground monuments. Discussion has divided between those scholars who interpret this imagery in terms of long-distance exchange networks and those who emphasize its more local significance, including its deployment in mortuary ritual. A strikingly similar system is identified in Southeast Asia and part of Melanesia and can be interpreted through archaeological and ethnographic sources, but in this case there is no need to distinguish between 'practical' and 'symbolic' interpretations of the depictions of ships. This paper summarizes the evidence from this region and suggests that it can offer a fruitful source of comparison for archaeologists working in northern Europe.