State of the Arctic Freshwater Biodiversity Report Acknowledgements For more information please contact: CAFF Designated Agencies: CAFF International Secretariat • Environment and Climate Change Canada Borgir, Nordurslod • Faroese Museum of Natural History 600 Akureyri, Iceland • Finnish Ministry of the Environment Phone: +354 462-3350 • Ministry of Nature and Environment, Government of Greenland Fax: +354 462-3390 • Icelandic Institute of Natural History Email: [email protected] • Norwegian Environment Agency Website: www.caff.is • Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of the Russian Federation • Swedish Environmental Protection Agency • United States Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service CAFF Permanent Participant Organizations: • Aleut International Association (AIA) • Arctic Athabaskan Council (AAC) • Gwich’in Council International (GCI) • Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC) • Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North (RAIPON) • Saami Council The report and associated materials can be downloaded for free at: www.arcticbiodiversity.is/freshwater This publication should be cited as: Lento, J., W. Goedkoop, J. Culp, K.S. Christoffersen, Kári Fannar Lárusson, E. Fefilova, G. Guðbergsson, P. Liljaniemi, J.S. Ólafsson, S. Sandøy, C. Zimmerman, T. Christensen, P. Chambers, J. Heino, S. Hellsten, M. Kahlert, F. Keck, S. Laske, D. Chun Pong Lau, I. Lavoie, B. Levenstein, H. Mariash, K. Rühland, E. Saulnier- Talbot, A.K. Schartau, and M. Svenning. 2019. State of the Arctic Freshwater Biodiversity. Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna International Secretariat, Akureyri, Iceland. ISBN 978-9935-431-77-6 Cover photo: Brachycentrus subnublius, a casemaking caddisfly / Jan Hamrsky. Editing: Tom Barry, Tom Christensen, Joseph Culp, Willem Goedkoop, and Jennifer Lento CBMP Freshwater Steering Group: Willem Goedkoop (co-lead), Joseph Culp (co-lead), Jennifer Lento, Petri Liljaniemi, Kirsten S.Christoffersen, Elena Fefilova, Jón S. Ólafsson, Steinar Sandøy, Chris Zimmerman, Jan Rene Larsen, Tom Christensen, Sara Longan, and Kári Fannar Lárusson CBMP Leads: Tom Christensen, Sara Longan CAFF Secretariat: Tom Barry, Courtney Price, Kári Fannar Lárusson, Hólmgrímur Helgason, and Olga Pálsdóttir Authors of report: Jennifer Lento, Willem Goedkoop, Joseph Culp, Kirsten Christoffersen, Elena Fefilova, Guðni Guðbergsson, Kári Fannar Lárusson, Petri Liljaniemi, Jón S. Ólafsson, Steinar Sandøy, Christian Zimmerman, Tom Christensen, Patricia Chambers, Jani Heino, Seppo Hellsten, Maria Kahlert, Francois Keck, Sarah Laske, Danny Chun Pong Lau, Isabelle Lavoie, Brianna Levenstein, Heather Mariash, Kathleen Rühland, Emilie Saulnier-Talbot, Ann Kristin Schartau, Martin Svenning. Contributors to report: Ekaterina Abramova, Per-Arne Amundsen, Jukka Aroviita, Tom Barry, Maria Baturina, Carolina Behe, Daniel Bogan, John Brittain, Bob Brua, Stéphane Campeau, Krista Chin, Catherine Docherty, Olga Dubovskaya, Frauke Ecke, Arni Einarsson, Jaakko Erkinaro, M. Falkegård, Frank Farsø Riget, Laura Forsstrom, Nikolai Friberg, Larisa Frolova, Ole Geertz-Hansen, Brian Hayden, Kerstin Holmgren, Þóra Katrín Hrafnsdóttir, Brian Huser, Haraldur R. Ingvarsson, Elena Ivanova, Dean Jacobsen, Ben Jones, I-R. Jonsson, Kimmo Kahilainen, Satu-Maaria Karjalainen, Jan Karlsson, Jennie Knopp, Elena Kochanova, Olga Kononova, Elena Kravchuk, Ånund Kvambekk, Torben Lauridsen, Olga Loskutova, Annette M Watson, Kjetil Melvold, Alexander Milner, Marit Mjelde, Heikki Mykrä, Gulnara Nigamatzyanova, Anna Novichkova, Panu Orell, Johan Östergren, Michael Power, Courtney Price, Ruslan Rafikov, Milla Rautio, Atso Romakkaniemi, Jukka Ruuhijärvi, Svein Jakob Saltveit, Susanne Schneider, Rebecca Shaftel, John Smol, Jan-Idar Solbakken, Heidi Swanson, Tobias Vrede, Matt Whitman, Jukka Ylikörkkö, Ivan Zuev. Data providers: Ontario Ministry of the Environment (MOE) Cooperative Freshwater Ecology Unit; Parks Canada Western Arctic Field Unit; members of the Paleoecological Environmental Assessment & Research Laboratory, including Dermot Antoniades, Marianne Douglas, Irene Gregory-Eaves, Katherine Griffiths, Kathryn Hargan, Adam Jeziorski, Bronwyn Keatley, Tamsin Laing, Tammy Karst- Riddoch, Darlene Lim, Kathryn McCleary, Neal Michelutti, Alyson Paul, Reinhard Pienitz, Emily Stewart, Jon Sweetman, Joshua Thienpont; Jan Weckström; University of Ottawa Laboratory for Paleoclimatology and Climatology; contributors to the online Circumpolar Diatom Database (CDD), including Reinhard Pienitz, Ghislain Côté, Marie-Andrée Fallu, and Laurence Laperrière; Institute of Biology of the Komi Scientific Centre of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences; Institute of Biophysics of Federal Research Center “Krasnoyarsk Science Center”; of the Siberian Branch of Russian Academy of Sciences; Siberian Federal University; Institute of Geology and Petroleum Technologies of the Kazan Federal University; Lena DeltaNature Reserve; Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), data host for national freshwater monitoring in Sweden; Greenland Ecosystem Monitoring (GEM) program; Icelandic Marine and Freshwater Research Institute; University of Iceland; Hólar University College; the Icelandic Institute of Natural History; the Natural History Museum of Kópavogur. State of the Arctic Freshwater Biodiversity Report CAFF would also like to thank the following people who assisted in data identification, acquisition, and formatting: Brittany Armstrong, Beverley Elliott, Julia Howland, Dave Hryn, Courtney Johnson, Bethany Marston, Nicole Nader, Allison Ritcey, Raja Wetuschat, Pernilla Rönnback, Stefan Hellgren, Berit Sers, Trine W. Perlt, Henriette Hansen, Babara Barta, Jónina H. Ólafsdóttir, and Thora K. Hrafnsdóttir. Graphics: Kári Fannar Lárusson, Jennifer Lento, Hólmgrímur Helgason, María Rut Dýrfjörð, Courtney Price and Hrannar A. Hauksson. Layout/Design: Maria Dýrfjörð, www.mariacreativestudio.com Funding and support: CAFF would like to acknowledge support from the Nordic Council of Ministers, Norwegian Environment Agency, Environment and Climate Change Canada, Government of the Northwest Territories Cumulative Impacts Monitoring Program (CIMP), U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management Alaska, Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), Ministry of Environment and Food of Denmark (DANCEA), Icelandic Institute of Natural History, Canadian Rivers Institute, the University of New Brunswick, and the University of Copenhagen. The authors are grateful to the following who provided a thorough review with valuable comments and suggestions for the improvement of the SAFBR: Lee Brown, Mike Gill, Eren Turak, Wendy Monk, Tom Barry, Courtney Price, and Sara Longan. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc- sa/4.0/. All photographs are subject to a separate restricted copyright and may not be reproduced without explicit consent, which should be sought directly from the copyright holder. The views expressed in this peer-reviewed report are the responsibility of the authors of the report and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Arctic Council, its members or its observers, contributing institutions or funding institutions. 2 1. Executive Summary Introduction for some countries, but even in these cases (e.g., Sweden, Norway), considerable data formatting and harmonization Arctic freshwater ecosystems (lakes, rivers, and associated were required before the data could be compiled for the wetlands) are threatened by climate change and human circumpolar region. Consolidated databases were very development that can affect freshwater biodiversity. limited in other countries, which induced extensive data Such effects will change not only the distributions and searches and recovery of government reports, published abundances of aquatic species, but also the lives of Arctic literature and industry registries and digitization/ Peoples that are dependent on the ecosystem services harmonization before data could be added to the CBMP- supplied by lakes and rivers. Thus, the freshwater biodiversity Freshwater database. The extensive circumpolar freshwater program of the Circumpolar Biodiversity Monitoring Program database is a primary deliverable of the CBMP-Freshwater to (Freshwater-CBMP) focuses on lake and river ecosystems and CAFF, as it documents the underlying SAFBR data and will has established a long-term monitoring framework for these facilitate future assessments of change in Arctic freshwaters. Arctic freshwaters. Developed for the Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF; the biodiversity Working Group of the Abiotic Variables Arctic Council), this framework facilitates more accurate and rapid detection, communication and response to significant Lakes and rivers are closely interlinked with the surrounding trends in Arctic water quality and biodiversity. Freshwater- landscape and reflect climate- and human-induced changes CBMP goals are addressed in the “Arctic Freshwater in land-use and development, with shifts in abiotic drivers Biodiversity Monitoring Plan”, which describes an integrated, of biodiversity being early warning indicators of ecological ecosystem-based approach for monitoring Arctic freshwaters change. The Freshwater Monitoring Plan identifies nine major (Culp et al. 2012a). environmental and anthropogenic stressors to