CHARTER aims to advance state-of-the-art (SOTA) knowledge on Arctic biodiversity change and social-ecological systems (SES) on four critical fronts: i) Feedbacks: To understand transitions in vegetation cover, energy balance and cryospheric change at centennial, decadal, and present-day time scales; ii) SES and biodiversity: To understand the effects of biodiversity changes on indigenous/local communities and traditional livelihoods, e.g. reindeer herding; iii) Modelling: To integrate biochemical/permafrost soil carbon exchange, sea ice and albedo into an Earth System Model (ESM), and incorporate these into the latest Arctic Regional Climate modeling efforts; and iv) Policy: To develop strategies supporting Arctic communities with co-benefits and synergies between adaptation, mitigation and policy implications. To accomplish these, CHARTER combines expertise from Earth System sciences, biodiversity indices and SES research. CHARTER is an ambitious effort to advance SOTA modelling of 21st century Arctic change with major socio-economic implications and feedbacks for the Cryosphere. We bring together our strongly participatory approaches that incorporate indigenous/local communities’ ways of knowing regional changes with SOTA research on circumpolar climate dynamics and long-term palaeoecological studies. CHARTER collates and processes truly transdisciplinary quantitative and qualitative empirical datasets for a holistic view that can be modeled. Arctic residents and stakeholders work alongside scientists to identify risks and viable adaptation strategies in relation to projected changes and future resilience in Arctic SESs. CHARTER combines natural sciences with ESM and participatory approaches to leverage the untapped potential for wild ungulate and livestock management to regulate global climate feedbacks through biogeoengineering. CHARTER’s results will lead to new tools and data for implementing sustainable strategies and establish public dialogue on the Arctic.

The Arctic is currently experiencing some of the globally most dramatic ecosystem changes due to climate warming and increased anthropogenic pressure, with important implications for biological conservation and its inhabitants. Indigenous Arctic and Subarctic communities, whose livelihoods are closely linked to their environment and who directly depend on the herding and hunting of large herbivores, will have to adapt to the effects of climate warming and vegetation changes. Building relevant scenarios requires understanding the relative roles of climate, herbivory and increased anthropogenic pressures as large-scale drivers as well as on local scales relevant to the communities. We will conduct a comprehensive inter- and transdisciplinary study using sedimentary ancient DNA, current ecological observations and anthropological investigations of indigenous peoples’ knowledge and interpretations. We will: 1. use DNA of plants, mammals and fungi from sediment cores to identify local biodiversity changes and vegetation shifts over large spatial (circumarctic) and temporal (Last Glacial Maximum until today) scale. 2. identify drivers of recent and historic biodiversity changes by comparing contemporary and past effects of herbivory, anthropogenic impacts and climate change on a circumarctic spatial scale and integrate them in climatic niche models to forecast future changes. 3. chronicle indigenous and local knowledge (ILK) of biodiversity changes and their drivers, and of the role of societal practices/human choices in shaping and adapting to changes in four separate Arctic areas. 4. build scenarios based on the outcomes of 1-3 in an iterative process with local stakeholders. Our study will bring together the perspectives of local communities and scientific data acquisition throughout the project. This will allow us to investigate ecosystem shifts and build scenarios of transformations of biodiversity and ecosystem services that are of immediate stakeholder relevance.