5. December 2025 Red foxes have expanded into tundra regions of Eurasia and North America during the last century. By being opportunistic predators and fierce competitors, invading red foxes threaten arctic fox and ground-nesting bird populations. To help protect these species against red foxes, this new study investigated how red foxes move within the tundra. COAT researchers found that red foxes moved large...

4. December 2025

A new study from COAT untangles what is behind the variation in chemical composition of tundra plants - a resource that varies a lot in terms of quality for reindeer. 

5. May 2025 Tundra vegetation in Svalbard is monitored by field measurements and drone and satellite-based remote sensing imagery. In this study, COAT researchers investigated how the remote-sensed vegetation index, NDVI, relates to field-based plant biomass and goose grubbing disturbances. The researchers found differences in the relationships between vegetation index and field-based biomass between...

31. January 2025

Warmer and wetter winters are expected to hamper rodents access to food, resulting in dampened, irregular or lost rodent population cycles. A new study shows that across Fennoscandian tundra, areas with milder winter climate have lower amplitude population cycles.

25. April 2024 A new study from COAT uncovers suitability of habitats for the three key herbivorous species in the Norwegian high Arctic Island group Svalbard: the Svalbard reindeer, the Svalbard rock ptarmigan, and pink-footed goose. Only a small fraction of the vegetated tundra was suitable for these species combined. Management and conservation of Svalbard tundra needs therefore to consider...

7. November 2023

COAT is part of Nutrient Network, a worldwide network of research stations linked to grasslands. We have our "stations" on the Varanger peninsula and have contributed to a publication in Nature Communications.

18. October 2023 Camera traps have become a popular tool in nature science. An example of this is the novel camera trap method we have developed in COAT for monitoring of small mammals. This method provides important information about the animas without affecting them at all. However, novel methods also provide novel challenges. Up until now, researchers would have to look through hundreds of thousands of...

25. January 2023

Small rodents are crucial to the functioning of the tundra food-web because of their spectacular population cycles which gives the predators waste amounts of food in the peak years and cause a huge grazing pressure on the food-plants. Despite their importance much are still unknown about small rodents and their food-web interactions.

8. December 2021

COAT researchers monitor vegetation disturbances by biotic and abiotic factors, such as herbivory and extreme winter weather. However, these are not typical vegetation classes included in remote-sensing based maps.

21. September 2021

An international team led by a COAT -professor at UiT proposes a mechanism by which the large Pleistocene mammals were essential in promoting a very high floristic diversity, and that a similar mechanism is likely to promote diversity in our contemporary grasslands. The idea arised in the tundra grasslands of Varanger Peninsula during monitoring for COAT.

31. August 2021

Large-scale moth outbreaks have led to profound changes in plant communities from birch forests dominated by dwarf shrubs to grass-dominated systems. However, the indirect effects on the belowground compartment are poorly known.

18. February 2021 Iterative near-term forecasting is a promising approach to better understand and manage rapidly changing ecosystems such as the Arctic. Forecasts generated on a short-term time scale allow scientific hypotheses to be tested more frequently, speeding up scientific advancement, and are relevant to managers because the time scale can be influenced by decision-making. This approach was used by...

27. November 2020

Management of endangered species by culling mesopredators is increasingly common. To what extent such programs work as intended, is less clear. In a new study, COAT researchers evaluated the impact of red fox culling on a threatened ptarmigan species.

17. December 2018

Outbreaks by geometrid moths have caused extensive damage to mountain birch forest in northern Scandinavia during the last 15 years. A new study helps to explain why the damage has been so severe and suggests that the forest may fail to recover in the most heavily affected areas.