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

By

Desjardins, Émilie
Lai, Sandra
Payette, Serge
Dubé, Martin
Sokoloff, Paul
St-Louis, Annie
Poulin, Marie-Pier
Legros, Jade
Sirois, Luc
Vézina, François
Tam, Andrew
Berteaux, Dominique

Type

Article

Date of Publication

2021-2-9

Original Publication

Check list : journal of species lists and distribution

Volume

17

Series / Issue

Issue: 1

Pages

181--225

Subjects

Arctic endemic species , floristic inventory , High Arctic , imperiled species , northern distribution

Contributed by

Pensoft Publishers

Language

English

Published by

[São Paulo, Brazil] Luís Felipe Toledo 2005-

Identifiers

DOI: https://doi.org/10.15560/17.1.181

 

Abstract

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.