“The Times They Are A-Changin' “ – research trends and perspectives of reindeer pastoralism – A review using text mining and topic modelling

Abstract

A literature review on reindeer pastoralism was performed to assess research trends within this multifaceted field. A machine learning topic modelling approach was applied on abstracts retrieved online. The methodology offers a computational tool to find relevant themes by capturing meaningful structure among large collections of documents. Ten topics were identified. The three fastest expanding topics were related to “Space use”, “Climate change” and “Socio-cultural” aspects. They are interrelated and reflect the main challenges herders and reindeer are facing as their land use competes with an expanding resource extraction industry, arguably for facilitating the Green shift. Climate change thus indirectly influence the herders’ rights to land and resources and form of life. The “Socio-cultural” topic outnumbers the other topics during the last decade. The dominating natural science argument encompasses four topics: “Space use”, “Climate change”, “Herd productivity” and “Grazing and Vegetation”. Research across disciplines is still in its infancy, and an integration between social and ecological issues through a multidisciplinary approach demands for a deeper understanding of the future challenges faced by reindeer pastoralism.