Recommendations

Marine fishes

• Conduct pan-Arctic taxonomic analyses to clarify zoogeographic patterns that are important for detecting and understanding change.
• Establish and conduct a monitoring plan that is independent of fisheries-related programs to assess changes in fish abundance and distributions. Use information from non-commercial fish species caught in groundfish surveys to provide a first step in this direction.
• Use information from TK holders for monitoring marine fishes.
• Connect monitoring initiatives across scales.
• Conduct laboratory studies to examine the possible effects of abiotic and biotic changes (e.g. temperature, salinity, acidity and diseases) on fish species
• Ensure that data on fisheries (commercial as well as artisanal) are accurate and registered in catch databases (such as the Food Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations). Information from logbooks is also relevant as it can be used to estimate the bycatch and the effects of fisheries.

Marine mammals

• Implement existing international monitoring plans such as those for ringed seals and polar bear, with adaptive management principles to address the eleven FEC marine mammal species.
• Expand marine mammal monitoring efforts to include parameters on health, passive acoustics, habitat changes, and telemetry tracking studies.
• Obtain more knowledge about population sizes, densities, and distributions of marine mammal populations in order to understand the relationships between sea ice loss and climate change and to manage Arctic marine mammal populations in an appropriate manner.
• Involve indigenous and local peoples in the design and implementation of monitoring programs so that scientific knowledge and TLK holders are working collaboratively.
• Pursue a multidisciplinary and multi-knowledge approach and a high degree of collaboration across borders and between researchers, local communities and Arctic governments to better understand complex spatial-temporal shifts in drivers, ecological changes and animal health.

Knowledge gaps: Filling gaps in knowledge helps us better understand key elements and functions of the ecosystem that can help explain change and understand the system:

• Encourage the monitoring of relevant physical parameters alongside some FECs that are particularly sensitive to their effects, including sea ice biota and plankton.
• Expand monitoring programs to include important taxonomic groups and key ecosystem functions. These gaps are likely due to logistical challenges or lack of expertise in specific fields.
• Expand monitoring programs to include those utilizing both TK and science, involvement of Indigenous organizations and build capacity to provide a co-production of knowledge platform.

Sea ice biota

• Establish an annual monitoring programme from land fast sea ice at selected Arctic field stations in Canada (Resolute, Cambridge Bay), Greenland (Kobbefjord, Disko Bay, Zackenberg), Norway (Kongsfjorden, Billefjorden, Van Mijenfjorden), and the U.S. (Barrow).
• Establish a standardized monitoring protocol, including sample collection, preservation, microscopic and genetic analyses, taxonomic harmonization, and data sharing.
• Establish opportunistic monitoring from drifting sea ice during cruises of opportunity.
• Collect macrofauna samples in drifting sea ice via ship-based activities, scuba diving, electrical suction pumps, under-ice trawl nets, and remotely operated vehicles.

Benthos

• Develop a time- and cost-effective, long-term and standardized monitoring of megabenthic communities in all Arctic regions using regular national groundfish assessment surveys. Expanding monitoring on micro-, meio- and macrobenthic groups is encouraged.
• Gather information from research programs in regions without regular groundfish-shellfish trawl surveys. These are usually short-term and do not guarantee spatial consistency in sampling, but provide valuable information on benthic biodiversity and community patterns.
• Generate information on benthos from little-known regions, such as the Arctic Basin and Arctic Archipelago, on cryptic or difficult taxonomic groups, and on biological “hotspots”.
• Systematic studies of macrobenthos (grab investigations) and megabenthos (trawl bycatch of regular fishery surveys including both annual studies, as in the Atlantic Arctic, and periodic studies as in the Northern Bering and Chukchi Seas) are the most suitable and practical approach to long-term monitoring.
• Standardize methodology, including taxonomic identification, across regions to assist in regional comparisons.
• Recognize and support the use of TLK as an invaluable resource for understanding of changes in Arctic benthic communities.

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.

The most urgent priorities for the future are to

(i) improve our knowledge of population distributions to better inform our definitions of discrete flyway populations;

(ii) implement effective mechanisms to at least periodically measure abundance for all northern hemisphere goose populations to assess trends over time;

(iii) initiate research to identify factors responsible for declining trends in populations of concern, and

(iv) evaluate potential negative effects of overabundant goose populations on habitat and sympatric species.

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.

Indigenous Knowledge: The CBMP Terrestrial Plan aims to utilize both Indigenous Knowledge and science. Despite efforts, Indigenous Knowledge has not been systematically included in the START. To obtain a full assessment of the status and trends, better understand relationships and changes, and fill key knowledge gaps, there must be improved engagement with Indigenous Knowledge holders, Indigenous governments, and Indigenous monitoring programs not only in development of assessments but in collaboratively building more comprehensive monitoring programs and initiatives.

• Improve understanding of the research and monitoring priorities of PPs and Indigenous governments, organizations, and Peoples.
• Develop long-term partnerships between scientists and Indigenous Knowledge holders to co-develop mutually relevant research and monitoring priorities and programs with equitable participation in all stages of monitoring, beginning with research design, and continuing through implementation, analysis, interpretation, and communication of results.
• Seek guidance on how institutional resources can align with and support existing Indigenous-led monitoring efforts, the development of new Indigenous-led monitoring programs, and Indigenous models of land stewardship that include monitoring components.
• Consider and articulate the ways in which programs and findings can support Indigenous land stewardship.
• Support Indigenous-led monitoring capacity through investments in northern-based research, learning and digital infrastructure and by supporting education, employment, and leadership opportunities for Indigenous Peoples.
• Ensure monitoring agreements detail mechanisms for the protection and responsible use of data and Indigenous Knowledge, including basic principles of data sovereignty.
• Increase engagement of Indigenous Peoples within CBMP.
• Work with PPs to develop strategies to more effectively recognize and reflect Indigenous Knowledge in the CBMP.