Abstract
Global warming is driving environmental change in the Arctic. However, our current understanding of this change varies strongly among different environmental disciplines and is limited by the number and distribution of field sampling locations. Here, we use a quantitative framework based on multivariate statistical modeling to present the current state of sampling across environmental disciplines in the Arctic. We utilize an existing database of georeferenced Arctic field studies to investigate how sampling locations and citations of disciplines are distributed across Arctic topographical, soil and vegetation conditions, and highlight critical regions for potential new research areas in different disciplines. Continuous permafrost landscapes, and the northernmost Arctic bioclimatic zones are studied and cited the least in relation to their extent in many disciplines. We show that the clusters of sampling locations and citations are not uniform across disciplines. Sampling locations in Botany and Biogeochemistry cover environmental gradients the best, and Microbiology, Meteorology, Geosciences And Geographic Information Systems/remote Sensing/Modeling have the worst coverage. We conclude that across all disciplines, more research is needed particularly in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, northern Greenland, central and eastern Siberia, and in some disciplines, in Canadian mainland, central Alaska, western Siberia and northern Taimyr region. We provide detailed maps of potential new sampling locations for each environmental discipline that consider multiple variables simultaneously. These results will help prioritize future research efforts, thus increasing our knowledge about the Arctic environmental change.
Highlights
Global warming is driving environmental change in the Arctic (IPCC 2013, AMAP 2017)
This study reveals Arctic terrestrial conditions and regions that are currently under-investigated and require targeted empirical research
We give a brief introduction of Arctic environmental variability in current and future climate, provide suggestions of new study areas for different disciplines, and compare our results with other studies dealing with the representativeness of sampling locations
Summary
Global warming is driving environmental change in the Arctic (IPCC 2013, AMAP 2017). This change encompasses profound shifts in soil conditions (Schuur et al 2015, Biskaborn et al 2019), species distributions (Pearson et al 2013, Myers-Smith and Hik 2018), and ecosystem functioning (Bond-Lamberty et al 2018, Keenan and Riley 2018). There is, large spatial variation in environmental conditions across the Arctic, and the response of different environments to climate warming can be highly variable (Phoenix and Bjerke 2016, Lara et al 2018). There is a growing interest in efforts to synthesize the current extent of sampling locations and where new locations for environmental research are needed (Yang et al 2008, Hoffman et al 2013, Kumar et al 2016). Sampling strategies and network representativeness mapping have been conducted for very specific fields (Kumar et al 2016), or at regional scales (Hoffman et al 2013), but not for entire disciplines at larger scales
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