Establishing new ecological baselines and initiating monitoring schemes on Arctic vegetation are critical to monitor, predict, and manage current and future impacts of climate change. We conducted systematic plot-based surveys in the polar desert surrounding Alert (Ellesmere Island, Nunavut) to provide a temporal snapshot of current species diversity and abundance, and to establish a georeferenced baseline with permanent field markers allowing robust re-surveying.
A random stratified design was used, based on a habitat map of the study area (ca. 170 km2), to select the location of the vegetation plots. Each vegetation plot corresponded in five 1 m × 1 m quadrats, each located 5 m from a central point and at equal distance from one another. Following the point-intercept method of the International Tundra Experiment, we obtained in each quadrat an index of absolute cover for (1) vascular plants (identified to the species level), (2) cryptogams (identified as biological soil crust, cyanobacteria (blue-green algae), lichen, macrofungus, or moss), and (3) ground substrates (bare soil or rock). In 2018-2019, a total of 264 vegetation plots were surveyed (corresponding to 1,320 m2-quadrats) and among them, 50 vegetation plots (corresponding to 250 1-m2 quadrats) were permanently marked using two 20-cm metal nails hammered into the ground at opposite corners of the quadrats. Vascular plants are described in Desjardins et al. (2021a) whereas data collection methods and techniques are detailed in Desjardins et al. (2021a, 2021b).
