Plant Diversity of the Russian Arctic: Providing a Baseline for Arctic Change and Conservation Research

• Main Author: Zemlianskii, Vitalii
• Format: Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2024
• Subjects: Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies; UZH Dissertations; 570 Life sciences; biology; 590 Animals (Zoology); Arctic; Arctic Council; CAFF; Climate change; Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna; Tundra
• Online Access: https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/259615/; https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/259615/1/vzemli-thesis.pdf; https://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-259615

The Arctic tundra is one of the few biomes that have remained relatively untouched by the direct impact of economic activities. As the Arctic is warming almost four times faster than the global average (Chylek et al., 2022; Rantanen et al., 2022), pressure on the tundra is increasing, complicating efforts to conserve its ecosystems (Ernakovich et al., 2014; Niskanen et al., 2019; Reji Chacko et al., 2023). Plant diversity is a key component of the Arctic tundra as it forms the basis of ecosystem functioning. Plant diversity changes lead to cascading effects throughout the entire ecosystem, and also influence the global climate, primarily via the carbon and energy cycles (Heijmans et al., 2022; Loranty et al., 2014; Oehri et al., 2022). The importance of protecting plant diversity is recognized by Arctic countries through the Arctic Council, and conservation is facilitated by the Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF) (Barry et al., 2020). About half of the Arctic tundra is located in Russia, a country where independent research is facing serious challenges. In the Russian Arctic climate change and economic expansion are putting pressure on the ecosystems and thus, weakening their ability to maintain plant diversity (Khapugin et al., 2020; Telyatnikov & Pristyazhuk, 2014; Yu et al., 2011). With half of the tundra being located in Russia, pan-arctic conservation strategies need to include the Russian territories in order to maintain the intactness of this biome, even though directly influencing the Russian government's conservation decisions may be difficult given the current political context. The successful development of these strategies requires a thorough scientific understanding of the ecosystems and their functioning informed by up-to-date data on the processes affecting the Russian Arctic tundra and its plant diversity, currently largely missing. Observations on plant diversity in the Russian Arctic have been scattered and mostly not accessible for a comprehensive pan-Arctic analysis. Therefore, ...