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Biological Survey of the Bering Land Bridge National

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Biological Survey of the Bering Land Bridge National CHAPTER 5 �LORA AND VEGETATION OF THE CHUKCHI-IMURUK AREA Charles H. Racine and J. H. Anderson SUMMARY The proposed Chukchi-Imuruk National Reserve has a rich flora and a diverse vegetation on a variety of sites, reflecting a complex late Quaternary physiographic and biogeographic history. In 1973, 326 vascular species or subspecies and around 100 species of lichens and mosses were collected. Since the spruce woodlands and certain other locations were not collected, the total vascular flora of the area is estimated at 350 species. This, despite a moderately severe maritime-subarctic climate. There are 2 tree, 10 shrub, 25 dwarf shrub, 50 graminoid, 224 forb and 15 cryptogam species in the known vascular flora of the tundra zone. These are tabulated with indications of regional physiographic distribution. Sixty lichens are listed separately. Range knowledge was extended for 32 vascular species in the 1973 collections, including 17 extensions from outside the Seward Peninsula. Among lichens, Anaptyahia bryorum was collected for the first time in Alaska. Eighty-eight of the vascular species fall in one or another of Hulten's seven categories of Beringian radiant plants. None of the known species are endemic in the area, but 11 are limited or nearly limited in North America to the Seward Peninsula. Several locations, like Serpentine Hot Springs and the Lost Jim Lava Flow, are of special floristic interest. Floristic elements (species groups) in the area are coastal, Bendeleben Mountains, limestone domes and boreal. There appears to be a northwestward advance of green alder, balsam poplar, white spruce and certain shrub willows, possibly in response to an ameliorating climate during the past few decades. 1 The vegetation of the Chukchi-Imuruk area is referable to S. B. Young s Zone I shrub tundra. About 50 stands were sampled on most of the major kinds of sites. Ordination of the stand samples together with field observations and species list comparisons led to the establishment of 20 vegetation types, defined by dominant taxa and life forms (e.g. Dryas Dwarf Shrub Tundra) in five physiognomic classes. The latter are Forest and Woodlands, 3 types; Shrub Thickets, 4 types; Tussock-Dwarf Shrub Tundra, 3 types; Dwarf Shrub Tundra, 4 types, and the most diverse floristically; and Meadows (dry, wet and aquatic), 6 types. A sixth physiognomic category, rock deserts, is recognized but not differentiated into types. This classification is roughly parallel with earlier schemes of Hanson and Pegau for other parts of the Seward Peninsula. Vegetation types are described and discussed with reference to positions on environmental gradients, particularly the topographic-moisture gradient, and with reference to certain geomorphic features, like high-centered polygons and beach ridges. Special ordinations of two sets of data illustrate shifting species dominance among stands in the same type. General vegetation-site relationships are apparent, but there is much overlap or intergradation of the floristically and environmentally broadly defined vegetation types. A precise vegetation classification is not yet possible. Nevertheless, the 38 39 present scheme is suitable for regional-scale land-use planning and manage­ ment. It may also serve as a guide in future field work and analysis leading to the establishment of associations per se and the close correlation of these with site factors, as will be needed for local, large-scale planning and management. The 1973 work supports D. M. Hopkins's suspicions that cottongrass tussock­ dwarf shrub tundra (tussock-birch-heath), one of the more widespread vegeta­ tions in the area, is changing toward a kind of upland bog. The underlying process seems to be sphagnum moss invasion of inter-tussock hollows, in a climate that may be warming. Vegetation maps of the Espenberg Peninsula at 1:250,000 and Cape Espenberg at 1:63,360 are presented. These maps were made partly as an experiment in the use of Landsat imagery, but mostly as a comprehensive expression of some of the results of the vegetation study. They present considerably more infor­ mation for their areas than any previous maps. The first map features 14 map unit classes and a number of map units as small as is feasible to draw. Five of the classes are directly comparable to the present vegetation classification for the Chukchi-Imuruk area. Seven, mostly mosaic classes established in response to spatial and spectral resolution limitations of the Landsat image, are readily interpreted in terms of the classification� and two, drained and partially drained thaw lakes and open shallow water, accommodate obvious physiographic features. The Cape Espenberg map, featuring landform-vegetation units, provides a more detailed representation of the landscape. Instead of a typological classi­ fication, units are designated by individual combinations of landform, physiognomic category, and characteristic species. This map was used sep­ arately by the first author in an evaluation of terrain before and after petroleum exploration on the Espenberg Peninsula. GENERAL INTRODUCTION The proposed Chukchi-Imuruk National Reserve, on the Seward Peninsula, Alaska, features various tundra landscapes and, in the southeast, a forest-tundra landscape (Fig. 1). It is at a lower latitude than the northern boreal forest limit that extends eastward across most of Alaska and western Canada, lying mostly within a coastal strip of tundra along the western edge of Alaska. This lower-latitude tundra zone, resembling the true low Arctic, is a function of a North Pacific maritime climate featuring cloudy, cool, wet and windy summers. The flora is moderately rich and the vegetation diverse in the Chukchi-Imuruk area despite the climate. This is a consequence of a wide variety of sites for plant growth along a complex of environmental gradients from the sea coast to inland mountaintops. The major substrates are loess, quartz sand, volcanic ash, lava, limestone and granite. There is considerable variation in relief, drainage and physiographic position. Most of the area is ungla­ ciated, but periglacial processes have contributed to site diverstty. 40 I 167" 165" 16.3" 162" Korzceuc SOl/ • 1'/0 0 • 0 ()evilMt. Lak.s "5 9 Kilt it. fish 268 0. !:!ls. + o, 01�,1- 66" ,>,. :1,��- Amttric /640 Figure 1. The northwest limit of spruce and major paleobotanical locations. The position of the northwestern Alaska maritime-subarctic treeline appears to have varied through time, roughly northwestward-southeastward, along with other variations in the vegetation of the Chukchi-Imuruk area (Fig. 1; Table 5). These variations are believed due to climatic changes, changes that were partly responsible for sea level fluctuations (by the storage and release of water in continental glacier ice) and concomitant exposures and inundations of the Bering Land Bridge. Plant and animal fossil material is fairly abundant in the Chukchi-Imuruk area and elsewhere on the Seward Peninsula (Fig. 1). It has been found under lava flows, in lake sediments and in cliff and bluff exposures, and it has been dated from the Pliocene to the present. Studies of this material and work in geomorphology, marine sedimentology and archaeology have contributed to a modest knowledge of the natural history of the Bering Land Bridge and its surroundings, a region known as Beringia. As an intermittent intercon­ tinental land mass, Pleistocene Beringia was critical in the biologic evolu­ tion of northeastern Asia and northwestern North America. On the American side, Hulten (1937, 1973), Colinvaux (1964, 1967), Hopkins (1967, 1972) and Matthews (1974) have written most comprehensively about Beringia . 41 In recent times the flora and vegetation of the study area have been affected by reindeer herding, tundra fires, gold mining, and continuing climatic change (Melchior, this volume). Periglacial processes, permafrost phenomena and soil development continue to exert major effects (Hopkins and Sigafoos, 1951; Hopkins, 1963; Holowaychuk and Smeck, this volume). In this paper Part I treats the flora of the Ch�kchi-Imuruk area, and discusses aspects of past and present geography and habitat relationships of species. Considerations of vegetation follow in Part II. Along with a description and classification of the major vegetation types, the more apparent features of their physical environment are examined. In Part III we present the vegeta­ tion and its environment in the form of vegetation maps. Common names of plants are used when these are well established in botanical and lay circles. On first appearance in each part of the paper a common name is followed by its Latin name. Capitalization of certain specific epithets is in the spirit of Bailey (1949). Generic names are not capitalized when used alone as common names, e.g. sphagnum, dryas, elymus. The tenn vegetation is used in the common broad sense as well as more narrowly to designate individual plant assemblages of any sort when more precise terms, e.g. plant community or association, would be inappropriate or of undetermined applicability. This is consistent with the common uses of climate and soil. A climate, a soil and a vegetation may constitute a meaningful geobotanical unit in nature and as an object of study. Henceforth, references to Holowaychuk and Smeck and to soil types pertain to their paper in this volume. Photographs are by the first author except where noted. PART I . FLORA Background Few plant collections were made in the Chukchi-Imuruk area and vicinity prior to 1973. A. E. and M. P. Porsild collected on the Seward Peninsula in 1926 (Porsild, 1939). They visited places along the south coast, going a few miles inland from Nome where 11 •••it was necessary to collect above 1,000 ft in order to find rare and interesting plants that are Asiatic." Porsild wrote that three fourths of the species collected were Western Cordilleran or Bering Sea Endemic floristic elements or were Asiatic species transgressing into western America. Only one fourth were circumpolar or transcontinental North American.
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