Papers by Terekhina Alexandra
Earth's Future, 2024
Science, engineering, and society increasingly require integrative thinking about emerging proble... more Science, engineering, and society increasingly require integrative thinking about emerging problems in complex systems, a notion referred to as convergence science. Due to the concurrent pressures of two main stressors-rapid climate change and industrialization, Arctic research demands such a paradigm of scientific inquiry. This perspective represents a synthesis of a vision for its application in Arctic system studies, developed by a group of disciplinary experts consisting of social and earth system scientists, ecologists, and engineers. Our objective is to demonstrate how convergence research questions can be developed via a holistic view of system interactions that are then parsed into material links and concrete inquiries of disciplinary and interdisciplinary nature. We illustrate the application of the convergence science paradigm to several forms of Arctic stressors using the Yamal Peninsula of the Russian Arctic as a representative natural laboratory with a biogeographic gradient from the forest-tundra ecotone to the high Arctic.
Pastoralism
Human and animal mobility lies at the core of any nomadic pastoralist system. Anthropological stu... more Human and animal mobility lies at the core of any nomadic pastoralist system. Anthropological studies of migratory patterns of mobile pastoralists’ movements have revealed two universal sets of factors—ecological and non-ecological—that influence such movements differently. Our study focuses on the nomadic movement of the Yamal Nenets reindeer herders in the Russian Arctic using a microregional approach to study the indigenous communities on a large scale. The Nenets households of the Mordyyakha microregion in the northwest of the Yamal Peninsula have changed winter pasture sites several times over the past 15–20 years, while maintaining a stable summer route. Based on fieldwork among these people, we analyse how environmental and non-environmental factors influence the dynamics of their summer and winter meridional nomadic routes. We argue that long-term changes in their winter mobility are mainly related to the quality of pastures. Changing winter sites is a strategy that relates ...
Pastoralism, 2023
Human and animal mobility lies at the core of any nomadic pastoralist system. Anthropological stu... more Human and animal mobility lies at the core of any nomadic pastoralist system. Anthropological studies of migratory patterns of mobile pastoralists' movements have revealed two universal sets of factors-ecological and nonecological-that influence such movements differently. Our study focuses on the nomadic movement of the Yamal Nenets reindeer herders in the Russian Arctic using a microregional approach to study the indigenous communities on a large scale. The Nenets households of the Mordyyakha microregion in the northwest of the Yamal Peninsula have changed winter pasture sites several times over the past 15-20 years, while maintaining a stable summer route. Based on fieldwork among these people, we analyse how environmental and non-environmental factors influence the dynamics of their summer and winter meridional nomadic routes. We argue that long-term changes in their winter mobility are mainly related to the quality of pastures. Changing winter sites is a strategy that relates to ecological factors and still remains relevant for the households migrating via the meridional pastoral corridors of Yamal. In contrast, changing summer areas, as a rule, occurs in response to developing industry and, thus, relates to non-ecological factors.
Сибирские исторические исследования, 2023
Рассматривается специфика современного кочевого движения
оленеводов Ямала. Авторы используют микр... more Рассматривается специфика современного кочевого движения
оленеводов Ямала. Авторы используют микрорегиональный подход как метод исследования культурных и хозяйственных особенностей сообществ коренных народов Севера в крупном масштабе. Ненецкие домохозяйства микрорегиона «Мордыяха» на северо-западе полуострова Ямал за последние 15–20 лет несколько раз изменили участки зимних пастбищ, при этом сохраняя летнюю часть
маршрута устойчивой. На основе многолетней полевой работы среди ямальских оленеводов оцениваются экологические и неэкологические факторы, влияющие на динамику летних и зимних частей меридиональных кочевых маршрутов. Показано, что долгосрочные (или стратегические) изменения зимней части маршрута преимущественно связаны с качеством пастбищ, тогда как смена территории летних пастбищ, как правило, происходит под давлением неэкологических факторов.
Earth's Future
Warming‐driven growth of tall woody vegetation in the Arctic has the potential to accelerate clim... more Warming‐driven growth of tall woody vegetation in the Arctic has the potential to accelerate climate change through multiple positive feedbacks. Local‐scale evidence suggests that large herbivores limit this vegetation shift, but there is uncertainty at larger, regional scales whether current herbivory pressure is a major top‐down control on ecosystem structure and functioning. Across a 67,000 km2 region of the Yamal Peninsula in West Siberia, we integrated satellite remote sensing with a novel data set mapping the migrations of herds comprising 151,000 domesticated reindeer. Where reindeer numbers varied over space, higher reindeer herbivory pressure was consistently linked with lower coverage of tall woody vegetation. Within areas dominated by this vegetation type, productivity and climate were increasingly decoupled where reindeer density was higher. Our spaceborne fingerprint detection suggests that large herbivores, at current population densities, counteract Arctic vegetation ...
Earth's Future, 2023
Warming-driven growth of tall woody vegetation in the Arctic has the potential to accelerate clim... more Warming-driven growth of tall woody vegetation in the Arctic has the potential to accelerate climate change through multiple positive feedbacks. Local-scale evidence suggests that large herbivores limit this vegetation shift, but there is uncertainty at larger, regional scales whether current herbivory pressure is a major top-down control on ecosystem structure and functioning. Across a 67,000 km2 region of the Yamal Peninsula in West Siberia, we integrated satellite remote sensing with a novel data set mapping the migrations of herds comprising 151,000 domesticated reindeer. Where reindeer numbers varied over space, higher reindeer herbivory pressure was consistently linked with lower coverage of tall woody vegetation. Within areas dominated by this vegetation type, productivity and climate were increasingly decoupled where reindeer density was higher. Our spaceborne fingerprint detection suggests that large herbivores, at current population densities, counteract Arctic vegetation responses to climate change over large spatial scales.
Routledge eBooks, Mar 20, 2023
Based on our long-term feldwork in Yamal in 2008–2020, we would like to consider the global issue... more Based on our long-term feldwork in Yamal in 2008–2020, we would like to consider the global issues of climate change within the framework of local cases demonstrating the perceptions of people and their reactions (psychological and behavioral) to these changes. Refecting on our observations of nomadic daily life over a number of years, our continuing conversations in chums (nomadic tents) on environmental changes and analyzing the results of interviews, we decided to group the views of the Yamal tundra people into two types. One type includes several cases related to the temporality of climate change as observed by Indigenous people. The other type is spatial and includes the Nenets’ responses to adverse events, as seen in changes in migration patterns and tundra mobility.
CLIMATE CHANGE THROUGH THE EYES OF YAMAL REINDEER HERDERS, 2023
Based on our long-term feldwork in Yamal in 2008–2020, we would like to consider the global issue... more Based on our long-term feldwork in Yamal in 2008–2020, we would like to consider the global issues of climate change within the framework of local cases demonstrating the perceptions of people and their reactions (psychological and behavioral) to these changes. Refecting on our observations of nomadic daily life over a number of years, our continuing conversations in chums (nomadic tents) on environmental changes and analyzing the results of interviews, we decided to group the views of the Yamal tundra people into two types. One type includes several cases related to the temporality of climate change as observed by Indigenous people. The other type is spatial and includes the Nenets’ responses to adverse events, as seen in changes in migration patterns and tundra mobility.
Human Ecology
The movement patterns of domestic reindeer depending on indigenous herding practices were studied... more The movement patterns of domestic reindeer depending on indigenous herding practices were studied using GPS collars. Data were collected during the summer-autumn of 2021 from the private Nenets herd in the South of Yamal Peninsula, Russia. We classified the types of herders' influence on reindeer and estimated the densities of GPS fixes on pastures in four time periods in June-November. Based on ethnographic data and personal experience of migrating with Nenets, we hypothesized that a long-lasting stay of reindeer at a nomadic campsite is the significant indicator of human influence on a herd. Our GPS data registered that reindeer stayed at campsites significantly longer in July during the peak of insect harassment. This factor determined the maximum level of human control over the herd as shown by the limited distance of dispersal of reindeer from a campsite. By early August, the active phase of bloodsucking insects concludes as does active control of the herd, allowing a return to freer foraging and increased range of movement.
Human Ecology, 2022
The movement patterns of domestic reindeer depending on indigenous herding practices were studied... more The movement patterns of domestic reindeer depending on indigenous herding practices were studied using GPS collars. Data were collected during the summer-autumn of 2021 from the private Nenets herd in the South of Yamal Peninsula, Russia. We classified the types of herders' influence on reindeer and estimated the densities of GPS fixes on pastures in four time periods in June-November. Based on ethnographic data and personal experience of migrating with Nenets, we hypothesized that a long-lasting stay of reindeer at a nomadic campsite is the significant indicator of human influence on a herd. Our GPS data registered that reindeer stayed at campsites significantly longer in July during the peak of insect harassment. This factor determined the maximum level of human control over the herd as shown by the limited distance of dispersal of reindeer from a campsite. By early August, the active phase of bloodsucking insects concludes as does active control of the herd, allowing a return to freer foraging and increased range of movement.
Sibirskie istoricheskie issledovaniya, 2018
Представлен опыт антрополога в роли воспитателя кочевого детского сада во время длительной полево... more Представлен опыт антрополога в роли воспитателя кочевого детского сада во время длительной полевой работы среди ненцев-оленеводов полуострова Ямал (Ямало-Ненецкий АО, Российская Федерация). Автор рассматривает комплекс взаимодействий с людьми на стойбище и повседневных практик работы детского сада в тундре, а также предпринимает попытку выявления соответствия двух концептуальных моделей – системы федеральных норм образовательного процесса и кочевого образа жизни оленеводов.
European Journal of Wildlife Research, 2021
Human-wildlife problems often arise when predators kill livestock. This can develop into serious ... more Human-wildlife problems often arise when predators kill livestock. This can develop into serious conflicts between traditional pastoralists and other stakeholders, such as government officials and conservationists. In the Yamal Peninsula (Russia), nearly half of the indigenous Nenets people are reindeer herders. They have recently faced many challenges, such as high mortality of reindeer from pasture icing or disease outbreaks. In addition, predation of arctic fox on reindeer calves is perceived as an increasing problem. Here, we use an interdisciplinary approach to study this emerging predation problem. We present here results from semi-structured interviews with indigenous people, as well as from biological monitoring of fox populations. Our field data were obtained in Erkuta, in the south of Yamal and in Sabetta in the north, close to a newly built industrial settlement. We show how different factors may have come together to create a problematic situation. These factors include the abandonment of the fur trade in the 1990s, the building of huge industrial facilities providing possible resource subsidies and the increasing frequency of abnormal weather events leading to weak reindeer, high reindeer mortality and abundant carcasses as resources for predators. We discuss how each of these factors affects the abundance of predators as well as the understanding of the herders.
Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences, 2019
Since 1990s the collection of panty (reindeer velvet antlers) have become one of the important pa... more Since 1990s the collection of panty (reindeer velvet antlers) have become one of the important part of the economy of the tundra peoples. The panty trade had formed the whole social network between reindeer herders and “merchants” — the collectors of panty connecting a reindeer herder with the global market. After the outbreak of anthrax in 2016 in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, the discussion of the problems of overgrazing and the lack of reindeer pastures have intensified. Some of the scholars claim that the steep rise of the Yamal reindeer herds in the last decades is closely related with the so-called “panty reindeer herding” (allegedly more profitably than the meat-oriented herding but treating the pastures more extensively because of the increasing of the number of the unslaughtered animals) and such a view have provoked the huge discussion. The article presents the different views of the polemicists and analyzes them. To understand the whole mechanism of the panty busines...
Teile dieses Beitrags wurden mit Unterstützung der Russischen Wissenschaftsstiftung (Rossijskii n... more Teile dieses Beitrags wurden mit Unterstützung der Russischen Wissenschaftsstiftung (Rossijskii naučnyj fond), Projekt Nr. 18-18-00309 erstellt.
Диссертационная работа на соискание кандидата исторических наук представляет собой социально-антр... more Диссертационная работа на соискание кандидата исторических наук представляет собой социально-антропологическое исследование феномена кочевого образования в России.
ЭНЕРГИЯ АРКТИКИ и СИБИРИ: использование ресурсов в контексте социально-экономических изменений, 2020
The context of an emerging predation problem: Nenets reindeer herders and Arctic foxes in Yamal, 2021
Human-wildlife problems often arise when predators kill livestock. This can develop into serious ... more Human-wildlife problems often arise when predators kill livestock. This can develop into serious conficts between traditional pastoralists and other stakeholders, such as government ofcials and conservationists. In the Yamal Peninsula (Russia), nearly half of the indigenous Nenets people are reindeer herders. They have recently faced many challenges, such as high mortality of reindeer from pasture icing or disease outbreaks. In addition, predation of arctic fox on reindeer calves is perceived as an increasing problem. Here, we use an interdisciplinary approach to study this emerging predation problem. We present here results from semi-structured interviews with indigenous people, as well as from biological monitoring of fox populations.
Our field data were obtained in Erkuta, in the south of Yamal and in Sabetta in the north, close to a newly built industrial settlement. We show how diferent factors may have come together to create a problematic situation. These factors include the abandonment of the fur trade in the 1990s, the building of huge industrial facilities providing possible resource subsidies and the increasing frequency of abnormal weather events leading to weak reindeer, high reindeer mortality and abundant carcasses as resources for predators. We discuss how each of these factors afects the abundance of predators as well as the understanding of the herders.
Терёхина А.Н., Волковицкий А. И. Железная дорога сквозь тундру: оленеводы Ямала и инфраструктура // Сибирские исторические исследования, №3, 2020
К 2011 г. на полуострове Ямал было закончено строительство железной дороги Обская-Бованенково, пр... more К 2011 г. на полуострове Ямал было закончено строительство железной дороги Обская-Бованенково, предназначенной для транспортировки грузов и людей к одному из крупнейших газовых месторождений России. Появление дороги на территориях проживания ямальских оленеводов привело к вы-ведению из оборота значительной части пастбищ. Вместе с тем за последние годы железная дорога для коренного населения стала не только неотъемлемой частью ландшафта, но и новым драйвером мобильности. Тундровики, проживающие рядом с железной дорогой, активно пользуются новым инфраструктурным ресурсом, имея право бесплатного проезда (например, ездят закупать продукты на городские оптовые базы). Станции железной дороги стали центрами притяжения для кочевников, а магистраль расширила границы традиционной гендерной мобильности, позволив женщинам практически в любое время года передвигаться независимо от мужчин. Кроме того, новые возможности получили наименее «подвижные» возрастные группы-старики и дети. В то же время промышленная инфраструктура обусловила различные проявления социально-пространственного неравенства.
Современные проблемы ямальского оленеводства: дискуссии и перспективы // Этнография. 2 (8), 2020
Ямало-Ненецкий округ давно позиционируется как самый оленеводческий и крупнейший газодобывающий р... more Ямало-Ненецкий округ давно позиционируется как самый оленеводческий и крупнейший газодобывающий регион России. Синтез современных технологий и «традиционного образа жизни» стал брендом Ямала. Вспышка сибирской язвы в Ямальском районе летом 2016 г. вызвала повышенное внимание к вопросам оленеводства. В ходе ликвидации последствий эпизоотии самое большое в мире поголовье домашнего северного оленя, предмет гордости ямальцев, было объявлено главной экологической проблемой региона, причина которой — методы ведения хозяйства самими ненцами. Антракс и тема перевыпаса вызвали дискуссии среди исследователей разных научных направлений и актуализировали необходимость государственного регулирования содержания оленей. Статья посвящена обзору и анализу кризисных событий ямальского оленеводства последних лет и дискурсов заинтересованных сторон, в том числе противоречивым взглядам представителей естественных и социальных наук на причины вспышки антракса и проблему перевыпаса.
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Papers by Terekhina Alexandra
оленеводов Ямала. Авторы используют микрорегиональный подход как метод исследования культурных и хозяйственных особенностей сообществ коренных народов Севера в крупном масштабе. Ненецкие домохозяйства микрорегиона «Мордыяха» на северо-западе полуострова Ямал за последние 15–20 лет несколько раз изменили участки зимних пастбищ, при этом сохраняя летнюю часть
маршрута устойчивой. На основе многолетней полевой работы среди ямальских оленеводов оцениваются экологические и неэкологические факторы, влияющие на динамику летних и зимних частей меридиональных кочевых маршрутов. Показано, что долгосрочные (или стратегические) изменения зимней части маршрута преимущественно связаны с качеством пастбищ, тогда как смена территории летних пастбищ, как правило, происходит под давлением неэкологических факторов.
Our field data were obtained in Erkuta, in the south of Yamal and in Sabetta in the north, close to a newly built industrial settlement. We show how diferent factors may have come together to create a problematic situation. These factors include the abandonment of the fur trade in the 1990s, the building of huge industrial facilities providing possible resource subsidies and the increasing frequency of abnormal weather events leading to weak reindeer, high reindeer mortality and abundant carcasses as resources for predators. We discuss how each of these factors afects the abundance of predators as well as the understanding of the herders.
оленеводов Ямала. Авторы используют микрорегиональный подход как метод исследования культурных и хозяйственных особенностей сообществ коренных народов Севера в крупном масштабе. Ненецкие домохозяйства микрорегиона «Мордыяха» на северо-западе полуострова Ямал за последние 15–20 лет несколько раз изменили участки зимних пастбищ, при этом сохраняя летнюю часть
маршрута устойчивой. На основе многолетней полевой работы среди ямальских оленеводов оцениваются экологические и неэкологические факторы, влияющие на динамику летних и зимних частей меридиональных кочевых маршрутов. Показано, что долгосрочные (или стратегические) изменения зимней части маршрута преимущественно связаны с качеством пастбищ, тогда как смена территории летних пастбищ, как правило, происходит под давлением неэкологических факторов.
Our field data were obtained in Erkuta, in the south of Yamal and in Sabetta in the north, close to a newly built industrial settlement. We show how diferent factors may have come together to create a problematic situation. These factors include the abandonment of the fur trade in the 1990s, the building of huge industrial facilities providing possible resource subsidies and the increasing frequency of abnormal weather events leading to weak reindeer, high reindeer mortality and abundant carcasses as resources for predators. We discuss how each of these factors afects the abundance of predators as well as the understanding of the herders.