This document is the accepted manuscript version of the following article: Kern, R., Hotter, V., Frossard, A., Albrecht, M., Baum, C., Tytgat, B., … Karsten, U. (2019). Comparative vegetation survey with focus on cryptogamic covers in the high Arctic along two differing catenas. Polar Biology, 42(11), 2131-2145. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00300-019-02588-z 1 1 ORIGINAL PAPER 2 Comparative vegetation survey with focus on cryptogamic covers 3 in the high Arctic along two differing catenas 4 5 Ramona Kern1, Vivien Hotter1, Aline Frossard2, Martin Albrecht1, Christel Baum6, 6 Bjorn Tytgat3, Lotte De Maeyer3, David Velazquez4, Christophe Seppey5, Beat Frey2, 7 Michael Plötze7, Elie Verleyen3, Antonio Quesada4, Mette M. Svenning5, Karin Glaser1, 8 Ulf Karsten1* 9 10 1University of Rostock, Institute of Biological Sciences, Applied Ecology and Phycology, D-18059 Rostock, 11 Germany 12 2 Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL, CH-8903 Birmensdorf, Switzerland 13 3Ghent University, Department of Biology, Protistology and Aquatic Ecology, B-9000 Gent, Belgium 14 4Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Department of Biology, E-28049 Madrid, Spain 15 5UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Department of Arctic and Marine Biology, Faculty of Biosciences, 16 Fisheries and Economics, N-9037 Tromsø, Norway. 17 6University of Rostock, Soil Sciences, Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, D-18059 Rostock, 18 Germany 19 7ETH Zurich, Institute for Geotechnical Engineering, ClayLab, CH-8093 Zürich, Switzerland 20 21 22 *Correspondence: 23 Corresponding Author 24 Prof. Dr. Ulf Karsten, email:
[email protected] 25 26 27 Keywords 28 Arctic, Svalbard, cryptogamic cover, soil, moisture, tundra, vegetation survey 29 30 31 Abstract 32 Although cryptogamic covers are important ecosystem engineers in high Arctic tundra, they 33 were often neglected in vegetation surveys.