The project led by James Speed, started in 2017 and investigated the interactive effects of herbivory and climate on northern ecosystems. The DISENTANGLE project was hosted by the NTNU University Museum, Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Partners included Isabel Barrio (Agricultural University of Iceland), Alison Hester (James Hutton Institute, Scotland), John-Arvid Grytnes (University of Bergen), Jean-Pierre Tremblay (Université Laval) and Gunnar Austrheim and Mike Martin (NTNU).
There are three components to the project, the first used dendroecology to tease apart the effects of herbivory and climate on woody plant growth in boreal and tundra ecosystems, and long-term plant community data to investigate the herbivore and climate impacts on vegetation change. Katariina Vuorinen, a PhD student at the NTNU University Museum led this work (Vuorinen et al. 2022). The second aspect of the project investigated how herbivores affect the distribution of plant species. The third section of the project mapped out herbivore communities across the boreal and tundra biomes (Speed et al. 2021).