Need for a New Map.

During the next few decades the Arctic will be strongly affected by many forces from within and outside the region including global climate change, cumulative impacts of resource development, native population increases, and tourists. The relatively simple and fragile ecosystems could be dramatically altered through changes to the vegetation, wetland destruction, and thawing of ice-rich permafrost. This could have important consequences to the wildlife resources and to the native peoples within the Arctic, as well as feedbacks to the global hydrological and atmospheric systems.

A new vegetation map would provide a common legend and language for ecosystems of the Arctic region. Such a map is needed for a wide variety of purposes related to anticipated global changes, land-use planning, and education.

Production of a new circumpolar Arctic vegetation map (CAVM) is now complete (http://www.geobotany.uaf.edu/cavm/) and portrays the distribution and boundaries of Arctic vegetation north of the Arctic treeline at a scale of approximately 1:7,500,000. The map and accompanying database was produced by a combined effort of scientists from six Arctic countries: Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, and the United States.

Scope and goals of the CAVM project

The circumpolar Arctic vegetation mapping project will provide a variety of mapped vegetation information for the arctic tundra and polar desert region based on the most recent scientific understanding during the maps 10 year planning and compilation. The project was confined to the region north of the Arctic treeline because of its clear climatic and ecological boundaries, common political, cultural, and scientific issues that need to be addressed, and is considered to be a bellwether of effects of climate change. By limiting the project to the Arctic tundra region, the project has a clear focus, a relatively small and well-defined group of regional experts who will do the mapping, and relatively small area for which the mapping protocols and legends can be developed. The project produced three products at a scale of 1:7,500,000:

1. A photo-quality cloud-free and snow-free false-color infrared satellite image of the circumpolar region derived from satellite imagery;
2. A map of the relative vegetation greenness of the circumpolar region as portrayed by the maximum normalized difference vegetation index.
3. A geobotanical database and derived maps of the circumpolar arctic tundra and polar desert region. The database consists of an integrated map coded with landscape and vegetation information as interpreted on an image base map. Terrain units were delineated on the basis of seven landscape factors: landscape unit, surficial geology, percentage cover of lakes, moisture status, depth of organic soil layers, soil texture, and soil chemistry. Vegetation information was coded according to six variables: phytogeographic zone, floristic sector, horizontal structure, dominant plant growth forms, dominant plant communities, and characteristic plant community.

The overall CAVM Project Coordinator was Donald A. (Skip) Walker, Institute of Arctic Biology, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, Alaska. The Fish and Wildlife Service had the lead for the North American continental synthesis. Funding support for this synthesis has been received from the Bureau of Land Management (Alaska State Office) and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Anchorage, Alaska; these funds were matched by the U.S. Geological Survey's Alaska Science Center, Anchorage, Alaska.

The primary members of the CAVM mapping team included:

Canada: William A. Gould, Lawrence C. Bliss, Sylvia A. Edlund, Martha K. Raynolds, Stephen C. Zoltai
Greenland: Fred J. A. Daniels, Christian Bay, Maike Wilhelm
Iceland: Eythór Einarsson, Gudmundur Gundjónsson
Norway/Svalbard: Arve Elvebakk, Bernt E. Johansen
Russia: Galina V. Ananjeva, Dmitry S. Drozdov, Adrian E. Katenin, Sergei S. Kholod, Lyudmila A. Konchenko, Yuri V. Korostelev, Evgeny S. Melnikov, Natalia G. Moskalenko, Alexei N. Polezhaev, Olga E. Ponomareva, Elena B. Pospelova, Irina N. Safronova, Raisa P. Shelkunova, Boris A. Yurtsev
United States/Alaska: Martha K. Raynolds, Michael D. Fleming, Carl J. Markon, David F. Murray, Stephen S. Talbot, Donald A. Walker