{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,4,14]],"date-time":"2026-04-14T00:57:39Z","timestamp":1776128259562,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":49,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"13","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2024,6,29]],"date-time":"2024-06-29T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1719619200000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"name":"Lehigh University (M.T.M.) and the Broad Agency Announcement and the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center Cold Region Research Engineering Laboratory (ERDC-CRREL)","award":["W912HZ-20-BAA-01"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["W912HZ-20-BAA-01"]}]},{"name":"Lehigh University (M.T.M.) and the Broad Agency Announcement and the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center Cold Region Research Engineering Laboratory (ERDC-CRREL)","award":["2127271"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2127271"]}]},{"name":"NSF","award":["W912HZ-20-BAA-01"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["W912HZ-20-BAA-01"]}]},{"name":"NSF","award":["2127271"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2127271"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Remote Sensing"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Caribou (Rangifer tarandus) undergo exceptionally large, annual synchronized migrations of thousands of kilometers, triggered by their shared environmental stimuli. The proximate triggers of those migrations remain mysterious, though snow characteristics play an important role due to their influence on the mechanics of locomotion. We investigate whether the snow melt\u2013refreeze status relates to caribou movement, using previously collected Global Positioning System (GPS) caribou collar data. We analyzed 117 individual female caribou with &gt;30,000 observations between 2007 and 2016 from the Bathurst herd in Northern Canada. We used a hierarchical model to estimate the beginning, duration, and end of spring migration and compared these statistics against snow pack melt characteristics derived from 37 GHz vertically polarized (37V GHz) Calibrated Enhanced-Resolution Brightness Temperatures (CETB) at 3.125 km resolution. The timing of migration for Bathurst caribou generally tracked the snowmelt onset. The start of migration was closely linked to the main melt onset in the wintering areas, occurring on average 2.6 days later (range \u22121.9 to 8.4, se 0.28, n = 10). The weighted linear regression was also highly significant (p-value = 0.002, R2=0.717). The relationship between migration arrival times and the main melt onset on the calving grounds (R2 = 0.688, p-value = 0.003), however, had a considerably more variable lag (mean 13.3 d, se 0.67, range 3.1\u201320.4). No migrations ended before the main melt onset at the calving grounds. Thawing conditions may provide a trigger for migration or favorable conditions that increase animal mobility, and suggest that the snow properties are more important than snow presence. Further work is needed to understand how widespread this is and why there is such a relationship.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/rs16132391","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2024,7,1]],"date-time":"2024-07-01T08:17:29Z","timestamp":1719821849000},"page":"2391","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":2,"title":["Snowmelt Onset and Caribou (Rangifer tarandus) Spring Migration"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"16","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0006-5908-3906","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Mariah T.","family":"Matias","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Earth and Environmental Sciences Department, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA 18015, USA"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-8611-1822","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Joan M.","family":"Ramage","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Earth and Environmental Sciences Department, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA 18015, USA"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-8666-9674","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Eliezer","family":"Gurarie","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Environmental Biology, SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, Syracuse, NY 13210, USA"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-2544-659X","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Mary J.","family":"Brodzik","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"National Snow and Ice Data Center\/Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (NSIDC\/CIRES), University of Colorado at Boulder, 449 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309, USA"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2024,6,29]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"19052","DOI":"10.1073\/pnas.0800375105","article-title":"A movement ecology paradigm for unifying organismal movement research","volume":"105","author":"Nathan","year":"2008","journal-title":"Proc. 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