p u o r G C a A or FF Fl CAFF Proceeding Series Report Nr. 10 September 2013 Arctic Vegetation Archive (AVA) Workshop Krakow, Poland, April 14-16, 2013 Credits CAFF Designated Agencies: • Directorate for Nature Management, Trondheim, Norway • Environment Canada, Ottawa, Canada • Faroese Museum of Natural History, Tórshavn, Faroe Islands (Kingdom of Denmark) • Finnish Ministry of the Environment, Helsinki, Finland • Icelandic Institute of Natural History, Reykjavik, Iceland • The Ministry of Housing, Nature and Environment, Government of Greenland • Russian Federation Ministry of Natural Resources, Moscow, Russia • Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, Stockholm, Sweden • United States Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service, Anchorage, Alaska CAFF Permanent Participant Organizations: • Aleut International Association (AIA) • Arctic Athabaskan Council (AAC) • Gwich’in Council International (GCI) • Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC) – Greenland, Alaska and Canada • Russian Indigenous Peoples of the North (RAIPON) • Saami Council This publication should be cited as: Walker, D.A. Breen, A.L., Raynolds, M.K. & Walker, M.D. (Ed). 2013. Arctic Vegetation Archive (AVA) Workshop, Krakow, Poland, April 14-16, 2013. CAFF Proceedings Report #10. Akureyri, Iceland. ISBN: 978-9935-431-24-0 Cover photo: Fred Daniëls sampling a wet relevé plot in the high Arctic at Isachsen, Ellef Ringnes Island, Canada. Dominant species in the relevé include Luzula nivalis, Alopecurus alpinus, Schistidium holmenianum, Oncophorus wahlenbergii, Aulacomnium turgidum, Polytrichastrum alpinum, Collema ceraniscum, and Lecidea ramulosa Photo: D.A. Walker, July 2005. Back cover photo: Snowbed vegetation in the high Arctic at Isachsen, Ellef Ringnes Island, Canada. Photo: Fred Daniëls, July 2005. For more information please contact: CAFF International Secretariat Borgir, Nordurslod 600 Akureyri, Iceland Phone: +354 462-3350 Fax: +354 462-3390 Email: [email protected] Internet: www.caff.is Editing: D.A. Walker, A. Breen, M.K. Raynolds, M.D. Walker Layout: Courtney Price ___ CAFF Designated Area ska Ala Geob ot an y C p e n t u e r o r G C a A or l I FF F ns tit gy ute lo of Arctic Bio www.geobotany.uaf.edu 3 Table of Contents Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................................4 Preface ......................................................................................................................................................5 21 years to common ground: protecting our shared biodiversity legacy ...............................................................5 Marilyn D. Walker Introductory talk .....................................................................................................................................6 Overview of the Arctic Vegetation Archive Workshop, 14-16 April, Krakow, Poland ...........................................6 D.A. Walker Keynote address: Some reflections on the realization of an international pan-Arctic vegetation classification ................................................................................................................................................................................ 12 Fred J.A. Daniëls Short and extended abstracts of papers presented at the workshop...............................................17 Toward an Alaska prototype for the Arctic Vegetation Archive ................................................................................17 Amy L. Breen, Martha K. Raynolds, Stephan Hennekans, Marilyn Walker & Donald A. Walker Greenland data stored in the Arctic Vegetation Archive (AVA) in Münster ...........................................................29 Helga Bültmann & Fred J. A. Daniëls Phytosocioloy of the Western Canadian Arctic................................................................................................................33 Fred J.A. Daniëls and Dietbert Thannheiser Yamal and Gydan vegetation datasets ...............................................................................................................................40 Ksenia Ermokhina Vegetation data from boreal tundra of the North Atlantic and North Pacific regions ......................................45 Anna Maria Fosaa, Fred J. A. Daniëls, Starri Heiðmarsson, Ingibjörg S. Jónsdóttir and Stephen S. Talbot Unifying and analyzing vegetation-plot databases in Europe: the European Vegetation Archive (EVA) and the Braun-Blanquet project .......................................................................................................................................... 50 Borja Jiménez-Alfaro et. al. Application of Russian Arctic local flora database to the issues of Arctic biodiversity conservation ..........52 O.V. Khitun, T.M. Koroleva, S.V. Chinenko, V.V. Petrovsky, E.B. Pospelova, A.A Zverev A syntaxonomic analysis of the northwest to southwest vegetation gradient in the western part of European Russia Arctic ............................................................................................................................................................ 57 N. E. Koroleva Vegetation of the Vasyakha River Basin (Yugorsky Peninsula, Pai-Hoy Ridge) – a case study of vegetation diversity in the European sector of the Russian Arctic ...........................................................................60 Ekaterina Kulyugina Spatial vegetation structure of southern tundra from three sectors of the Siberian Arctic ...........................64 Nikolay Lashchinskiy VegBank: a permanent online repository for international plot and relevé data ...............................................66 Michael T. Lee and Robert K. Peet Vegetation data available for classification of Canadian Arctic sites .......................................................................71 Esther Lévesque, William H. MacKenzie, and Greg H.R. Henry A data compilation of Canadian Arctic vegetation relevé data and preliminary classification ....................75 William H. MacKenzie 4 The Russian input to the Arctic Vegetation Archive and an example of the value of plot data for assessing climate change on the Taymyr Peninsula ..................................................................................................... 76 N. V. Matveyeva, M. M. Cherosov, & M. Yu Telyatnikov Phytosociology of the Svalbard Archipelago including Bjørnøya and Jan Mayen .............................................81 Lennart Nilsen and Dietbert Thannheiser Approaches for storing and analyzing geobotanical data ..........................................................................................88 Alexander Novakovskiy The Pan-Arctic Species List (PASL) ........................................................................................................................................92 Martha K. Raynolds, Amy L. Breen, Donald A. Walker, Reidar Elven, René Belland, Nadezda Konstantinova, Hörður Kristinsson & Stephan Hennekens Vegetation datasets for Chukotka (Russia) .......................................................................................................................96 V. Razzhivin Towards assessing biodiversity feedbacks to climate in the Arctic - future application of the AVA .........101 Gabriela Schaepman-Strub, Maitane Iturrate, Reinhard Furrer The Arctic Vegetation Archive as a source for understanding spatial distribution of Arctic biodiversity ................................................................................................................................................................................103 Laerke Stewart, Niels M. Schmidt, Mary S. Wisz and Loïc Pellissier Plant communities of southern hypoarctic tundra of the Anabar River basin (North-West Yakutia) ......108 Mikhail Yu. Telyatnikov, Elena I. Troeva, Mikhail M. Cherosov, Sergey A. Pristyazhnyuk, Paraskovia A. Gogoleva & Lyudmila A. Pestryakova Participants and first authors .............................................................................................................110 Acknowledgements The Krakow workshop was sponsored by a workshop grant from the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC) with additional support provided by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA Grants NNX09AK56G and NNX13AM20G). The Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF), the CAFF Flora Group, and the Institute of Arctic Biology, University of Alaska Fairbanks, provided administrative support for the meeting. We particularly thank CAFF personnel, Tom Barry, Courtney Price, and Kári Fannar Lárusson for their help prior to and during the workshop and for preparation of this proceedings report. We also thank the staff at the Floriańska Guesthouse in Krakow for the excellent lodging and facilities for the meeting. The planning for the Krakow workshop took place at two earlier workshops in 2012 at Aarhus University, Roskilde, Denmark funded by TFI Networks grant to Prof. Chr. Damgaard, “Effect Studies and Adaptation to Climate Change,” under the Norforsk initiative (2011 – 2014). 5 Preface 21 years to common ground: protecting our shared biodiversity legacy Marilyn D. Walker HOMER Energy, Boulder, Colorado, USA, [email protected] AVA’s roots began in Boulder, Colorado, in the Spring of 1992, when I convened the first Circumpolar Arctic Vegetation Workshop, consisting of a small group of dedicated vegetation specialists from the US, Canada, Germany, the Soviet Union, Norway, and Finland.