Recommendations

Coordination: Better coordination allows for increased value for investment in monitoring programs, better opportunity to compare results, and more ability to draw meaningful conclusions from data:

• Strategically locate Arctic research stations and monitoring vessels, and use all collected specimens, to allow the collection and analysis of as many CBMP FECs as possible.
• Ensure research stations operate all year to better study FECs year round.
• Combine national monitoring with collaborative approaches that allow for sufficient integration and standardization to conduct syntheses across the circumpolar region.
• Standardize how data are collected, managed and made available. This is a key component in ensuring circumpolar Arctic comparability and should be an important consideration in the implementation of monitoring plans.
• Encourage states to increase the implementation of existing internationally coordinated monitoring plans.
• Connect monitoring initiatives and report across scales so that results are meaningful for local, sub-national, national, regional and global decision-makers.
• Continue to increase coordination between CBMP and other regional and global monitoring initiatives e.g., the Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network (GEOBON), International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) and the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Service (IPBES).

Seabirds

• Develop methods for assessing diet to increase our understanding of changes in the ecosystem and how they affect seabird populations.
• When selecting sites for new monitoring, consider proximity to hotspots for marine activities, access to the sea, and inclusion of plankton monitoring.
• Expand colony-based monitoring and strive to include a more complete array of parameters, in particular, diet and measures of survival.
• Consider a higher frequency of monitoring as current levels make it difficult to identify mechanisms or causes of change in populations.
• Conduct targeted surveys and individual tracking studies of seabird interactions at sea to improve our understanding of seabird interactions at sea, where seabirds spend most of their time.
• Continue to conduct at sea surveys on an opportunistic basis.

Traditional and Local Knowledge (TLK): Utilizing Traditional and Local Knowledge and involvement of TK holders allows for increased understanding of relationships and changes underway in Arctic ecosystems, current and historical trends, and serves to build valuable partnerships on the ground in Arctic communities.

• Use Traditional and Local Knowledge within the design and implementation of monitoring plans. The Traditional and Local Knowledge of people living along and off the Arctic Ocean is an invaluable resource for understanding changes in Arctic marine ecosystems and its inclusion should be supported by national governments.
• Increase engagement and partnerships with local residents and easy to access technology in monitoring programs. Indigenous communities are important ‘first responders’ to catastrophic events. More importantly, their knowledge systems provide a wealth of knowledge that should be involved in the analysis of collected data for increased understanding of current trends and filling historical gaps.
• There is a need for TLK on a range of FECs and to engage networks of TLK holders and Indigenous organisations.
• Use both TLK and scientific information on the analysis of harvest levels and status when evaluating overall population health and managing hunts.

Community-based monitoring networks and community relationship building:

• Increase the span of networks in the CBMP to include Community-based monitoring networks.
• Communicate information on changes and the results of monitoring between scientists and the public in both directions. This is crucial to the development of effective management strategies and human activities.

Knowledge Gaps : Currently, there is some monitoring for all FECs, but it varies in coverage, duration, frequency and access to institutional support and resources.

• Expand and coordinate long-term in situ time series across regions and across FECs.
• Implement ecosystem-based approaches that better monitor and link biological attributes to environmental drivers.
• Increase partnerships with Indigenous Knowledge holders and organizations.
• Increase and support contributions from Local Knowledge holders and citizen science.
• Work with Arctic Council Observer states to collect and compile knowledge on Arctic biodiversity.
• Improve data collection on rare species and species of concern.

Arthropods : Arthropods are highly diverse and under-studied. They serve as important connections between trophic levels and several are important indicators of changing environments. The START reports on six FECs: pollinators, decomposers, herbivores, prey for vertebrates, blood-feeding insects, and predators and parasitoids. Only a few localized trends are provided due to high variability and lack of monitoring.

• Implement long-term sampling programs at strategic sites with rigorous standardized trapping protocols.
• Collect baseline data, including structured inventories, using standardized protocols for FECs and key attributes.
• Work with Indigenous Knowledge holders, Local Knowledge holders, and/or citizen science to identify regionally important species to monitor, and key locations for long-term monitoring activities.
• Focus monitoring efforts on taxa that: (a) are well-studied with existing data; (b) respond to, or are vulnerable to, change; and/or (c) have possible range shifts. • Monitor dominant habitats at a variety of sites at both small and large geographic scales.
• Monitor relevant microhabitat environmental parameters, in addition to climatological variables, and connect to biological trends at relevant scale.
• Focus on critical FEC attributes, including ecosystem processes such as pollination, decomposition, and herbivory.
• Continue specimen sorting, identification and reporting and construct a complete trait database.
• Complete molecular sequence libraries, increase international collaboration to collate, analyze, archive, and make data accessible.

Ecosystem-based Monitoring and Reporting: Monitoring and reporting should encompass all key taxonomic groups and their likely relationships, linking responses to main biotic and abiotic drivers of change.

• Better coordinate between disciplines and knowledge systems both within and among Arctic states and Indigenous organizations, including experts in abiotic drivers of change (the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program) and other monitoring initiatives.
• Promote long-term integrated studies across biomes and taxonomic groups for examining trophic dynamics and other key interactions.
• Improve integration of factors that underpin changes in phenology, demography, and abundance.

Mammals: The START reports on half of mammal FECs including large herbivores (caribou/reindeer, muskoxen), small herbivores (lemming), and medium-sized predators (Arctic fox). Data deficiencies prohibited reporting on medium-sized herbivores, and large and small predators.

• Develop synchronized protocols that include more attributes and reduce geographical knowledge gaps.
• Establish or expand international monitoring networks for medium-sized herbivores and large and small carnivores.
• Emphasize spatial structure and diversity in monitoring efforts due to the northward advance of southern competitors and vegetation changes.
• For large herbivore, small herbivore, and medium-sized predator FECs:
• Agree on priorities and harmonize data collection across sites and programs;
• Share and standardize protocols, in cooperation with relevant partners including Indigenous Peoples and organizations, to include abundance, demographics, spatial structure, health, phenology and, for harvested species, harvest rates; and
• Ensure monitoring programs employ existing methods with new harmonized methods to allow data comparisons.
• Monitor health as an attribute and develop standardized health assessment protocols due to the anticipated impact of climate change on distribution and prevalence of disease.
• Monitor abiotic factors and drivers of change, across greater spatial distributions to assess the cumulative impacts of climate and other anthropogenic change on populations across their ranges.
• Conduct research on the vulnerabilities of populations to climate change and human impacts, and on genetic diversity and spatial structure of FECs.
• Increase collaboration using interdisciplinary and multi-knowledge approaches to share site- and population-specific information. This can improve monitoring and lead to better models to assess the vulnerabilities and resilience of specific populations.
• Address challenges in assessing abundance of FECs across the Arctic, including:
• reliability of abundance estimates, such as lack of precision and accuracy;
• changing baselines, such as changes in species distribution, sampling methodology, and areas monitored; and
• differences in frequency and spatial extent of monitoring.

Methods : Increased attention to methodology facilitates more precise and comparable results, standardized data collection, and ability to link regional monitoring to circumpolar efforts.

• Standardize how data is collected, managed, and reported, including field and sampling protocols, data collection methods, terminology, database harmonization and management, tools for data archiving and specimen libraries, including identification and curation.
• Create a harmonized, accessible, and long-term taxonomic framework for Arctic monitoring.
• Complete baseline studies and structured inventories to improve circumpolar data across FECs.
• Promote multi-species studies and long-term time series data.

Local Knowledge and Citizen Science: Local Knowledge exists on a spectrum from long-term, place-based experiential knowledge held by local residents, including harvesters, to knowledge of more recent residents. As such, monitoring efforts to work with Local Knowledge must interact with a wide range of diverse knowledge holders.

• Dedicate more time to collaboration with Local Knowledge holders in monitoring design, analysis and interpretation.
• Encourage and support citizen science platforms that engage Arctic residents, as well as visitors. Platforms should reflect strong scientific goals, have transparent methods for evaluating data quality, build communities of observers, engage a strong volunteer base, and devote consistent efforts to communicating results.
• Identify and collaborate across existing platforms to increase awareness and participation in citizen science and consider new approaches to address knowledge gaps.
• Invest in digital infrastructure as a prerequisite for fully accessible platforms to inform biodiversity monitoring.

Vegetation : Monitoring of vegetation is inconsistent, with large gaps in geographical cover. Of the four FECs for monitoring vegetation, the START was able to report on all plants, species of concern, and invasive alien species. Food species were not included as data were too disparate.

• Investigate causality in vegetation change in the context of ecosystem components, including habitat specific drivers, particularly climate, and emphasize ecosystem-based approaches.
• Continue and expand in situ time series.
• Utilize plot-based vegetation surveys to provide insight into vegetation changes and improve the ability to predict environmental change impacts on tundra ecosystems.
• Better consider the expected impacts of biotic and abiotic drivers on vegetation change when developing monitoring programs and conceptual models.
• Use regional and global remote-sensing products with higher spatial and temporal resolution.
• Increase monitoring efforts for all FECs, and target efforts to address data gaps, such as for food species.

Birds: Most bird species are difficult to monitor and attribute change due to the large spatial extent of their breeding habitats and multiple threats throughout flyways. Current monitoring is uneven and inadequate. The START reports on herbivores, insectivores, carnivores, and omnivores.

• Sustaining long-term monitoring projects is the best opportunity to track changes in FECs and drivers of those changes.
• Expand monitoring of species and populations with unknown or uncertain trends such as waders in the Central Asian Flyway and East Asian–Australasian Flyway (under the Arctic Migratory Birds Initiative).
• Improve monitoring coverage of the high Arctic and other areas with poor spatial coverage (i.e., Canadian Arctic Archipelago, Greenland, and eastern Russia), including staging and wintering areas within and outside the Arctic.
• Adopt new and emerging monitoring technologies, including various tagging devices (for the study of distribution and migration, and identification of critical stopover and wintering sites), bioacoustics (for abundance and diversity sampling), and satellite data (for colony monitoring).
• Enhance coordination within and among Arctic and non-Arctic states to improve data collection on migratory species and critical site identification across species’ ranges.
• Harmonize long-term studies to improve the reliability of status and trends assessments, ability to report on FEC attributes (e.g., phenology), and possible effects of environmental change, including risks of phenological mismatch.
• Use research stations as platforms to increase data coordination, sampling, and analyses, of FECs and drivers, and ensure standardized bird monitoring is part of station mandates where lacking.
• Strengthen linkages with AMAP to improve contaminant monitoring at different trophic levels and facilitate cooperation on isotope and genetic studies.

Coordination: Improved coordination of monitoring is necessary to implement a comprehensive, integrated, ecosystem-based monitoring program envisioned by the CBMP. Coordination is necessary to help achieve additional advice for monitoring presented in the START.

• Design statistically rigorous sampling methodologies and protocols.
• Encourage states to implement the CBMP Terrestrial Plan to secure long-term funding for existing monitoring.
• CAFF, including the CBMP, should take a coordinating role to follow-up on advice from this report. Specific tasks are found in the CBMP Strategic Plan 2021-2025.