A two-year change of arctic vegetation as observed in a permanent plot established in Ny-Alesund, Svalbard

• Main Author: Satoru Kojima
• Format: Report
• Language: English
• Published: Faculty of Arts and Science, Tokyo Woman's Christian University 2002
• Subjects: arctic; Ny-Alesund; permanent plot; vegetation monitoring; Arctic; Svalbard; Polar bioscience
• Online Access: https://nipr.repo.nii.ac.jp/?action=repository_uri&item_id=6190; http://id.nii.ac.jp/1291/00006190/; https://nipr.repo.nii.ac.jp/?action=repository_action_common_download&item_id=6190&item_no=1&attribute_id=18&file_no=1

In 1997,a permanent plot was established in an abandoned coal mine site on the outskirts of Ny-Alesund, Svalbard, to describe the present vegetation structure and to monitor future vegetation change. A 1m×1m quadrat was set up and was further divided into 100 small cells (subquadrats). All the vascular species were listed and their presence was recorded for each of the subquadrats. In 1999,the plot was revisited and all the subquadrats were rechecked for any change of species occurrence. The field data of 1997 and 1999 were compared and change of species occurrences was scrupulously examined for each subquadrat. In general, a considerable increase of occurrences of plants as expressed in the number of subquadrats took place during the two years. This suggested that even during the observation period the vegetation kept changing rapidly along with the progress of vegetation succession.