Rescuing valuable Arctic vegetation data for biodiversity models, ecosystem models and a panarctic vegetation classification

Two workshops held in Roskilde, Denmark, on 29 – 31 May and 17 – 19 December 2012, brought together key Arctic vegetation scientists and bio-diversity modelers to discuss the rich source of species-distribution information for plant biodiversity modeling studies contained in Arctic vegetation-plot (relevé) data. Georeferenced plot-based vegetation data are needed to understand factors that shape Arctic plant communities, to map distributions of plant species and communities, and to assess vegetation changes over space and time by using predictive models. Such research is especially important now because the Arctic vegetation is responding rapidly to the effects of climate change (Callaghan et al., 2005). The workshops had three main goals: 1) to develop a strategy for harmonizing the relevé data and database approaches available in the various Arctic countries to create an International Arctic Vegetation Database (IAVD, Walker and Raynolds, 2011) and a list of accepted Arctic vegetation species names and their synonyms to be used in that database; 2) to lay the foundation for prototype vegetation databases for Greenland and northern Alaska; and 3) to highlight promising methods for modeling and predicting biodiversity trends from patterns in the plant distribution data. Sponsors for the workshops were the Nordic Network on Climate and Biodiversity (CBIO-NET) project; Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF), the biodiversity monitoring arm of the Arctic Council; and the University of Aarhus.