Monitoring Terrestrial Biodiversity Across the Arctic

Cottongrass in the Arctic landscape.

Arctic environments experience some of the harshest conditions for life including extreme cold, strong winds, drought, extended darkness, and short growing seasons. Arctic ecosystems harbour highly specialized organisms, including endemic taxa that have adapted to survive in these severe conditions, and migratory species that exploit rich Arctic resources during summer breeding periods. Despite the remoteness of Arctic regions, their ecosystems and species are under increasing pressure from threats within and outside of northern latitudes, including contaminants, over-exploitation of endemic and migratory species, anthropogenic disturbance, resource extraction and landscape alteration, habitat loss and fragmentation, shifting distributions of prey and pathogens, and climate change.

Understanding the complex dynamics in the Arctic is confounded by a lack of long-term monitoring data to determine trends and develop adequate responses to the challenges facing biodiversity. Effective conservation and management of Arctic ecosystems requires comprehensive long-term information on the status of species, habitats, and ecological processes and functions, as well as potential drivers of change. Further, ecosystem-based monitoring approaches that capture the interactions of components at multiple scales are necessary to investigate complex compositional, functional, and structural changes.

This paper focuses on the creation of the Circumpolar Biodiversity Monitoring Programme (CBMP) Terrestrial Biodiversity Monitoring Plan, describing the plan’s development process and lessons learned. Further, it serves as a background paper for this special issue, Terrestrial Biodiversity in a Rapidly Changing Arctic, which presents the scientific basis for much of the CBMP State of the Arctic Terrestrial Biodiversity Report, which will be the first terrestrial circumpolar biodiversity assessment made by the CBMP.

Developing a circumpolar programme for the monitoring of Arctic terrestrial biodiversity

Abstract

The Arctic is undergoing biological and environmental changes, and a coordinated effort to monitor is critical to detect these changes. The Circumpolar Biodiversity Monitoring Programme (CBMP) of the Arctic Council biodiversity working group, Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF), has developed pan-Arctic biodiversity monitoring plans that aims to improve the ability to detect and report on long-term changes. Whilst introducing this special issue, this paper also presents the making of the terrestrial monitoring plan and discusses how the plan follows the steps required for an adaptive and ecosystem-based monitoring programme. In this article, we discuss how data on key findings can be used to inform circumpolar and global assessments, including the State of the Arctic Terrestrial Biodiversity Report, which will be the first terrestrial assessment made by the CBMP. Key findings, advice for future monitoring and lessons learned will be used in planning next steps of pan-Arctic coordinated monitoring.

Christensen, T., T. Barry, J. J. Taylor, M. Doyle, M. Aronsson, J. Braa, C. Burns, C. Coon, S. Coulson, C. Cuyler, K. Falk, S. Heiomarsson, P. Kulmala, J. P. Lawler, D. MacNearney, V. Ravolainen, P. A. Smith, M. Soloviev, and N. M. Schmidt. 2020. Developing a circumpolar programme for the monitoring of Arctic terrestrial biodiversity. Ambio 49(3): 655-665.

Explore more in Ambio 49(3), March 2020: Special Issue: Terrestrial biodiversity in a rapidly changing Arctic.