Circumpolar Arctic Vegetation Science Initiative Workshop

Activity Report

A Circumpolar Arctic Vegetation Science Initiative (CAVSI) Workshop was held from 21-24 March 2025 during Arctic Science Summit Week (ASSW) 2025 and the ICARP IV Summit in Boulder, CO. The 3-day workshop was attended by 85 participants representing 15 countries. A summary of workshop outcomes that are described at more length in a white paper in preparation for submission to the ICARP IV RPT 2 and attached below under.

Three highlights:

1. The 3-day CAVSI Workshop drew in 85 participants from 15 countries, including many young investigators. As a result of the workshop, a new early career Arctic vegetation science network was formed.
2. Workshop participants generated:
   1. 100 science questions to guide Arctic vegetation research for the next 10 years
   2. and overview of developing an Arctic Vegetation Monitoring Network
   3. guidance for developing protocols for major element sof the intitiatve
3. On the final day of the workshop, a resolution was signed by over 60 participants expressing their intent to address in principle the initiative’s goals, which will be summarized in a white paper that will be submitted to the ICARP IV Research Priority Team 2 (a draft is included below).

Summary of input provided for the ICARP IV process

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY OF THE CIRCUMPOLAR ARCTIC VEGETATION SCIENCE INITIATIVE

GOAL
The goal of the Circumpolar Arctic Vegetation Science Initiative (CAVSI) is to organize the international community of Arctic vegetation researchers to address the critical vegetation-related priorities during the next ten years of Arctic research, including the Fifth International Polar Year (IPY-5, 2032–2033).

THE NEED FOR AN ARCTIC VEGETATION-FOCUSED INITIATIVE
A vegetation component is needed for U.S. and international Arctic observing networks to coordinate ongoing Arctic vegetation research planned for IPY-5. Currently, there is not a cohesive circumpolar framework to observe and monitor changes to Arctic vegetation that includes: (1) a network of sites across the full range of Arctic climates, phytogeographic regions, and local habitats; (2) standardized methods to describe and monitor local floras, vegetation composition, and key environmental factors; (3) a pan-Arctic vegetation plot archive to store legacy and recent plot data; (4) a consistent hierarchical classification and checklist of Arctic vegetation; and (5) an archive of Arctic vegetation and landcover maps.

The Circumpolar Arctic Vegetation Science Initiative (CAVSI) is a response to these needs and those expressed by ICARP IV Research Priority Team 1 (Zhang and Rasouli 2025) and RPT2 (Bret-Harte 2025), which focus on the role of the Arctic in the global systems and observing, reconstructing, and predicting future Arctic climate dynamics and ecosystem responses. CAVSI is also a response to the recommendation by the Arctic Council for long-term biodiversity and monitoring to address key gaps in Arctic-system knowledge (CAFF 2013, Christiansen et al. 2020). It also aligns with several U.S. and international Arctic research national plans and policies that involve observation, monitoring, modeling, and prediction, including those of the United States Arctic Research Commission (USARC 2023), the international Sustaining Arctic Research Network (SAON, Starkweather et al. 2021).

CAVSI WORKSHOP AT ARCTIC SCIENCE SUMMIT WEEK 2025
This document is a result of a three-day CAVSI workshop and two CAVSI science sessions that occurred during Arctic Science Summit Week, March 20–28, 2025 Eighty-five workshop participants from 15 countries were asked to identify priority questions related to Arctic vegetations and discuss CAVSI approaches to answer them. The resulting questions were grouped into eleven broader questions and refined further into four umbrella questions with strategic approaches that CAVSI could use for answering the questions.

The full proceedings from the CAVSI Workshop and science sessions will be summarized in a separate proceeding document of the Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (Walker et al. 2025 in prep.). The following describes the key elements of CAVSI that build on structures that already exist in prototype form for some the Arctic countries and regions.

CAVSI ORGANIZATION
(a) The CAVSI Organizing Group (COG) is responsible for overall program development, organization, and communication.
(b) The Early Career Arctic Vegetation Researchers is a self-organized group of early-career Arctic scientists interested in vegetation-related themes.

AN ARCTIC VEGETATION OBSERVATION NETWORK
The core of CAVSI is an Arctic Vegetation Observation Network (AVON) that will be organized mainly within established Arctic observation stations and networks.

PROTOCOLs
The Arctic vegetation-observing sites would be encouraged to use standardized methods that will be spelled out in methods manuals containing protocols for: (1) Species lists and local floras, including a regularly updated Pan-Arctic Species List that includes vascular plant, bryophytes, and lichens; (2) Sampling of vegetation composition, vegetation structure, and key site factors in permanent vegetation plots; (3) Archiving vegetation plot data, including standardized archives for plot data in each region of the Arctic; and the merging the regional archives into a Pan-Arctic vegetation archive: (4) Arctic vegetation classification that would include an Arctic vegetation-type checklist and be compatible with the European, U.S. and Canadian classification approaches; (5) Vegetation mapping, that includes revision and publication of a new very-high-resolution raster version of the Circumpolar Arctic Vegetation Map (CAVM v. 3) and development of a hierarchical map archive that contains maps of vegetation and other geoecological information at global, regional, landscape, and plot scales.

APPLICATIONS
The existing sets of the first version of the Circumpolar Arctic Vegetation Map and archived Arctic plot data have been applied to wide range of circumpolar activities, most of which remain relevant for IPY-5, including analyses of: (a) circumpolar patterns of phytomass and NDVI (b) summer-temperature – vegetation relationships along north-south bioclimatic gradients in North America and Eurasia; (c) changes in vegetation greening patterns in relation to changing sea-ice conditions and land-surface temperatures (; (d) diversity of plants, fungi, and terrestrial ecosystems (; (e) analysis of vegetation change and consequences to ; (f) large-scale cumulative impact analyses including oil and gas development at Prudhoe Bay and circumpolar assessment of oil and gas development ; (g) Arctic species diversity models ); and (h) vegetation changes in relation to snow, water, ice, and permafrost

TOWARDS IPY-5
While it is still early to formulate well-developed IPY-5 projects, several ideas are being developed by a group of collaborative projects that would utilize CAVSI data and maps.

Recommendations for priorities in Arctic research for the coming decade

1. Work with existing Arctic observing network and vegetation-related networks to establish an Arctic Vegetation Observing Network across the full range of Arctic climates, phytogeographic regions, and local habitats
2. Develop standardized protocols to (a) describe and monitor local floras, vegetation composition, and key environmental factors at permanent vegetation plots represenative of the range of vegetation habitats at each observing station; (b) a pan-Arctic vegetation plot archive to store legacy and recent plot data; (c) a consistent hierarchical classification and checklist of Arctic vegetation; and (d) an archive of Arctic vegetation and landcover maps.

Main Organisers 

Donald A. Walker, University of Alaska Fairbanks, USA
Amy L. Breen, University of Alaska Fairbanks, USA
Helga Bültmann, University of Münster, Germany
David Cooper, Colorado State University, USA
Sarah C. Elmendorf, University of Colorado, USA
Howard E. Epstein, University of Virginia, USA
Gerald J. Frost, Alaska Biological Research, Fairbanks, USA
Robert D. Hollister, Grand Valley State University, USA
Stefanie Ickert-Bond, University of Alaska Fairbanks, USA
Shawnee A. Kasanke, Alaska Biological Research, USA
William H. MacKenzie, Province of British Columbia, Smithers, BC, Canada
Donald McClennan, Coenosis Consulting, Canada
Ladislav Mucina, Murdoch University, Perth, Australia
Martha K. Raynolds, University of Alaska Fairbanks, USA
Jozef Šibík, Slovak Academy of Science, Bratislava, Slovakia
Mária Šibíková, Slovak Academy of Science, Bratislava, Slovakia
Gabriela Schaepman-Strub, University of Zurich, Switzerland
Kevin Timoney, Treeline Ecological Research, Canada
Craig E. Tweedie, University of Texas at El Paso, USA
Vitalii Zemlianskii, University of Zurich, Switzerland

Type of Activity

• Workshop

Dates and Locations

• 21-24 March 2025 at Arctic Science Summit Week 2025, Boulder, Colorado, USA