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RESPONDENT
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Benoit Sittler
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SITE NAME
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Traill Island, Karupelv Valley, Greenland, Denmark
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| Contact details
(phone/fax//e-mail//address): |
| (49-761)2033629/(49-761)2033638 // sittler@ruf.uni-freiburg.de // Institut fur Landespflege Albert-Ludwigs-Universitat Freiburg D-79085 Freiburg, Germany
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PROJECT DETAILS |
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Start of survey:
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End
of survey: |
Team
size: |
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WEATHER
CONDITIONS
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Weather conditions: |
| Regarding the general conditions, one should first note that snow melt was completed quite earlier than on average, since less than 1% of the tundra area was still covered with snow on 25.06. Similarly, sea ice disappeared early, the fjord becoming cleared around 10.07.
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| Date of ice-break on
rivers: |
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| Date of final loss of
snow: |
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BIOTIC
CONDITIONS
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| Rodents abundance evaluation: |
average
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Breeding conditions:
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This recovery of the lemming population over 2003 and the levels and trends exhibited in this summer have resulted in patterns in predators that are fully in conformity with what was expected on the basis of earlier long term observations: These included: 10 breeding pairs of Long-tailed Skuas (but only 3 fledged young in August); the breeding of a Snowy Owl pair (only one chick fledged in August, out of a total of 6 eggs); at least 4 fox dens in the valley with litters of several pups observed in early July.
For stoats, broad agreement is also shown by the observations on winternests since level of nest predation (5 out of 892) was regarded as insufficient to stop the recovery, the more that stoats seems to have entered the area only in late winter as their presence was mainly recorded in nest aggregations. And with just one adult caught in the traps, there was no indication of any litters produced this year in the restricted study area.
Apart from Turnstones whose breeding numbers were noticeably lower than on average (only two breeding pairs in the restricted study area), the other waders (Dunlin, Sanderling, Knot, Ringed Plover) were breeding in average numbers, but the assessment of their breeding success was still uncertain.
The failure to record any ptarmigan during the whole season deserves attention, which suggest a prolongation of their low phase. In this regard, it would be of interest to learn whether such trends are also documented in other High Arctic sites.
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Rodent dynamics:
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| The routine lemming monitoring of the winter nests revealed a recovery of the population over winter (892 winter nests for 2004 against 56 in 2003 !), this figure being also in line with the trapping surveys (11 lemmings caught at the end of June for 500 lemming burrows checked). These figures (suggesting lemming densities close to 2 animals/hectare) testify of an intermediate situation and ranked eight's in a time series of now 17 years. Reproductive activity in the winternests was reflected both by the high proportion of nests including pellets from young (nearly 50 % of all nests!) as well as the commonness of nest aggregations of at least three nests, even if aggregations numbering more than 7 common in peak years where not observed.
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Rodent species recorded:
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| Latin | Abundance |
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| Dicrostonyx groenlandicus | common |
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Summary
of fauna studies: |
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