Survey of the vascular plants of Alert (Ellesmere Island, Canada), a polar desert at the northern tip of the Americas

• Published in: Check List
• Main Authors: Émilie Desjardins, Sandra Lai, Serge Payette, Martin Dubé, Paul C. Sokoloff, Annie St-Louis, Marie-Pier Poulin, Jade Legros, Luc Sirois, François Vézina, Andrew Tam, Dominique Berteaux
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Pensoft Publishers 2021
• Subjects: Arctic endemic species; Floristic inventory; High; Biology (General); QH301-705.5; Arctic; Nunavut; Ellesmere Island; Canada; Fries; Draba pauciflora; Festuca hyperborea; polar desert
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.15560/17.1.181; https://doaj.org/article/539064c974914eb6b31e8829079375d5

Long-term monitoring is critical to guide conservation strategies and assess the impacts of climatic changes and anthropogenic activities. In High Arctic ecosystems, information on distribution and population trends of plants is dramatically lacking. During two field expeditions in 2018 and 2019, we conducted a systematic floristic survey together with opportunistic collecting in the polar desert surrounding Alert (Nunavut, Canada) to update past vascular plant inventories. We recorded 58 species, of which 54 species were recorded over the last seven decades, and four species that are additions to the local flora (Draba pauciflora R. Brown, Festuca edlundiae S.G. Aiken, Consaul, & Lefkovitch, Festuca hyperborea Holmen ex Frederiksen, and ×Pucciphippsia vacillans (T. Fries) Tzvelev). With the addition of 19 species that were previously reported but not found in our survey, we estimate the species richness in the study area at 77 species.