Does Scale Matter? Variation in Area Use Across Spatiotemporal Scales of Two Sheep Breeds in Two Contrasting Alpine Environments

Abstract

Animal-by-environment interaction creates space use patterns, which characterize an animal’s utilization distribution (UD) area. We fitted 51 ewes of the two Norwegian breeds Norwegian White Sheep (NWS) and Spælsau (SP) with Global Positioning System collars in two contrasting environments (Spekedalen; poor pasture and Bratthøa; rich pasture) during the 2013 and 2014 summer grazing seasons. We explored effects of spatiotemporal scales on UD sizes of the sheep in these environments. We defined the temporal scales as 5-, 10-, 15-, 20-, 30-, and 60-d intervals and spatial scales as 95% and 50% UD using the dynamic Brownian Bridge Movement Model. Our results showed that, in general, sheep had larger UDs in the poor area compared with the rich area and the SP had larger UDs compared with the NWS. We found 95% UD differences between the two environments at all temporal scales, except 60 d, whereas differences were found between breeds at all but the finest temporal scale. The 50% UD differed between breeds and environments on all temporal scales except between-study areas at the 5-d scale. The lack of environment by breed interactions suggest that the two breeds respond equally to range quality at all spatiotemporal scales. We conclude that scale has to be considered when comparing UD differences across spatial and temporal scales in contrasting environments and between sheep genotypes. Our findings are thus important for management of grazing resources in multipurpose land use planning.