Abstract
Satellite-derived remote-sensing products are providing a modern circumpolar perspective of Arctic vegetation and its changes, but this new view is dependent on a long heritage of ground-based observations in the Arctic. Several products of the Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna are key to our current understanding. We review aspects of the PanArctic Flora, the Circumpolar Arctic Vegetation Map, the Arctic Biodiversity Assessment, and the Arctic Vegetation Archive (AVA) as they relate to efforts to describe and map the vegetation, plant biomass, and biodiversity of the Arctic at circumpolar, regional, landscape and plot scales. Cornerstones for all these tools are ground-based plant-species and plant-community surveys. The AVA is in progress and will store plot-based vegetation observations in a public-accessible database for vegetation classification, modeling, diversity studies, and other applications. We present the current status of the Alaska Arctic Vegetation Archive (AVA-AK), as a regional example for the panarctic archive, and with a roadmap for a coordinated international approach to survey, archive and classify Arctic vegetation. We note the need for more consistent standards of plot-based observations, and make several recommendations to improve the linkage between plot-based observations biodiversity studies and satellite-based observations of Arctic vegetation.
Highlights
10 May 2016L A Druckenmiller, M E Edwards, D Ehrich, H E Epstein, W A Gould, R A Ims, H Meltofte, M K Raynolds, J Sibik, S S Talbot and P J Webber
Accurate and consistent approaches for documenting the composition and structure of Arctic vegetation and its relationships to the environment are essential to ground-based and remote-sensing studies that attempt to understand Arctic biodiversity and the causes of circumpolar vegetation change (Bunn and Goetz 2006, Bhatt et al 2010, Elmendorf et al 2012, 2015, Meltofte et al 2013, Myers-Smith et al 2015b)
The Circumpolar Arctic Vegetation Map (CAVM), which was first proposed at the 1992 International Arctic Workshop on Classification of Arctic Vegetation in Boulder, CO (Walker et al 1994), and the map was completed in 2003 (CAVM Team 2003, Walker et al 2005)
Summary
L A Druckenmiller, M E Edwards, D Ehrich, H E Epstein, W A Gould, R A Ims, H Meltofte, M K Raynolds, J Sibik, S S Talbot and P J Webber. Commons Attribution 3.0 6 Department of Geography and Environment, University of Southampton, UK licence. 13 Department of Plant Biology (Emeritus), Michigan State University, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
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