The change in Arctic nature foreshadows the global environment of ...(y red foxes. Ivory gulls ringed seal...)

Ivory gulls, ringed seals, polar bears and narwhals are examples of species with a small distribution and specialised habitats, and such species will be the first ones to suffer from the changes. They need the ice in seas to procreate and to find shelter from predators.

Climate change also has indirect effects that appear in the interaction between different species. Olivier Gilg and academy professor Ilkka Hanski from the University of Helsinki have teamed up with Benot Sittler, a researcher from the University of Freiburg, and studied the waning of the previously cyclical population dynamics of the collared lemming in Greenland. The results will be published in the journal Global Change Biology at the end of the year.

With mathematical models, the researchers showed that the drastic change in the population dynamics of collared lemmings is explained by the fact that snow melts sooner than before: the lemmings do not procreate as long as before below the snow, and are also easier for predators to hunt. In addition, frost-melt events in winter form ice layers in the snow layer or at the tundra's surface, which is why the lemmings are unable to find food like they used to.

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