Weather Front

Save the Musk Oxen

Researchers are using satellite technology to determine when conditions in the Arctic become unfavorable enough to cause a mass starvation of native animals, such as musk oxen and reindeer. Native people depend on these animals for food sources.

In October 2003, rain fell for several days on top of a 6-inch snow cover on Banks Island at the edge of the Beaufort Sea inside the Arctic Circle. The rain seeped to the soil surface below the snow and then froze into a thick layer of ice that lasted through the winter. This prevented the musk oxen in the area from foraging for lichens and mosses at the soil’s surface, resulting in the deaths of some 20,000 animals. The deaths were not noticed until the next spring, because the closest weather station to the herd—about 60 miles away—did not record any precipitation during that rainfall, so few people knew that the oxen were in trouble.

“Starvation happened over a period of many months, and no one knew until they went up to do the population count the next spring,” said researcher Thomas Grenfell of the University of Washington.

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