Arctic Vegetation Archive - Arctic Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning

Final Report

The AVA initiative is encouraging each Arctic nation to assemble its own archive with common protocols that will later allow the databases to be united into a single circumpolar AVA. Over 30 scientists attended the AVA IASC workshop in Arkhangelsk. Oral and poster presentations discussed progress of the national data bases, with a focus on Russian data, and potential applications of AVA data. Several hours were reserved to discuss special topics in smaller groups, including 1) practical questions of data integration into AVA (with a focus on Russian territories), 2) methods and standardization for vegetation classification, 3) strategies of how to move forward with the with Arctic vegetation work in international programmes, and 4) to collect materials for a central website linking to national data bases. During a half-day training, interested participants learned how to use Turboveg, the standard software to enter data into AVA. This training led to discussions on how to make Turboveg more user-friendly, how to technically align the different national data sets to make them ready for circumpolar integration, and on common species lists for vascular plants, mosses, and lichens. A half-day wrap-up and synthesis meeting concluded the extended Arctic vegetation meeting on 23 May 2019.

Highlights

Abstracts on the status of national AVA data bases, Russian vegetation plot data, and applications of vegetation plot data are available through the workshop proceedings
Training of Turboveg has resulted in technical recommendations on how to align national data entries in preparation for the pan-arctic data integration.
A central website on AVA, with supporting information and links to national data bases is under construction with CAFF, and will be accessible through CAFF