Reindeer husbandry : a practical decision-tool for adaption of herds to rangelands

This decision-tool is focused on the adaptation of reindeer herds to available food resources in a district, i.e. to the availability and quality of winter and summer pastures. Previous studies have found that practical management is complicated by the dynamics involved and by lack of precise information. Hence one is faced with an information problem. The decision-tool captures the essence of optimisation models and should be sufficiently simple to be used in practice. In short, the decision-tool helps organize raw time-series data such that they become directly useful for decision-making. The intention is that the tool shall stimulate to reflection and discussions that may lead to increased mutual understanding, better collection and use of data, and to better strategies. Case studies from the Nordic countries indicate that the tool produces new and interesting insights from existing data. Feel free to ask the authors for a demonstration of the tool.