The Arctic Economy Depends on the Vole - Thus the Arctic tundra forms ripples like wind ripples in desert sand, sea ripples on the shoreline and high altitude rippled clouds, voles establish their farms on the high points of the ripples that are covered over by frost in winter ..
(Nature)The frost acts like a hot house whereas despite it is the Arctic there are still hours of very strong sunlight each day, thus the Sun's rays are magnified by the ice crystals that in turn focus on the frost and provide drip irrigation in daylight hours.
The Arvicolinae are a subfamily of rodents that includes the voles, lemmings, and muskrats. They are most closely related to the other subfamilies in the Cricetidae, comprising the hamsters and New World rats and mice. As well the heat coming from the vole's bodies prevent the ground from freezing, while the CO2 from their expelled breaths fosters vegetable growth, and insofar as the vegetable growth breathes in carbon dioxide and breadth out oxygen, their expelled breaths provides oxygen to the underground.
They are a depressive species and when the time comes and they are expelled from their underground homes, they decide to suicide and go abroad whence they become food for any number of species including snow owls, foxes, cats and wolves.
So the vole farms are the primary source that converts soil, sunlight and water into food, the secondary phase is when they are eaten by the aforementioned critters, whereas after that big animals like musk ox, buffalo, caribou and other herbivores graze on the farm produce that grows tall when the frost melts after winter, and their castings prepare the ground for the next round of growth.
