Recommendations

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.

Knowledge Gaps : Currently, there is some monitoring for all FECs, but it varies in coverage, duration, frequency and access to institutional support and resources.

• Expand and coordinate long-term in situ time series across regions and across FECs.
• Implement ecosystem-based approaches that better monitor and link biological attributes to environmental drivers.
• Increase partnerships with Indigenous Knowledge holders and organizations.
• Increase and support contributions from Local Knowledge holders and citizen science.
• Work with Arctic Council Observer states to collect and compile knowledge on Arctic biodiversity.
• Improve data collection on rare species and species of concern.

Arthropods : Arthropods are highly diverse and under-studied. They serve as important connections between trophic levels and several are important indicators of changing environments. The START reports on six FECs: pollinators, decomposers, herbivores, prey for vertebrates, blood-feeding insects, and predators and parasitoids. Only a few localized trends are provided due to high variability and lack of monitoring.

• Implement long-term sampling programs at strategic sites with rigorous standardized trapping protocols.
• Collect baseline data, including structured inventories, using standardized protocols for FECs and key attributes.
• Work with Indigenous Knowledge holders, Local Knowledge holders, and/or citizen science to identify regionally important species to monitor, and key locations for long-term monitoring activities.
• Focus monitoring efforts on taxa that: (a) are well-studied with existing data; (b) respond to, or are vulnerable to, change; and/or (c) have possible range shifts. • Monitor dominant habitats at a variety of sites at both small and large geographic scales.
• Monitor relevant microhabitat environmental parameters, in addition to climatological variables, and connect to biological trends at relevant scale.
• Focus on critical FEC attributes, including ecosystem processes such as pollination, decomposition, and herbivory.
• Continue specimen sorting, identification and reporting and construct a complete trait database.
• Complete molecular sequence libraries, increase international collaboration to collate, analyze, archive, and make data accessible.

Ecosystem-based Monitoring and Reporting: Monitoring and reporting should encompass all key taxonomic groups and their likely relationships, linking responses to main biotic and abiotic drivers of change.

• Better coordinate between disciplines and knowledge systems both within and among Arctic states and Indigenous organizations, including experts in abiotic drivers of change (the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program) and other monitoring initiatives.
• Promote long-term integrated studies across biomes and taxonomic groups for examining trophic dynamics and other key interactions.
• Improve integration of factors that underpin changes in phenology, demography, and abundance.

Mammals: The START reports on half of mammal FECs including large herbivores (caribou/reindeer, muskoxen), small herbivores (lemming), and medium-sized predators (Arctic fox). Data deficiencies prohibited reporting on medium-sized herbivores, and large and small predators.

• Develop synchronized protocols that include more attributes and reduce geographical knowledge gaps.
• Establish or expand international monitoring networks for medium-sized herbivores and large and small carnivores.
• Emphasize spatial structure and diversity in monitoring efforts due to the northward advance of southern competitors and vegetation changes.
• For large herbivore, small herbivore, and medium-sized predator FECs:
• Agree on priorities and harmonize data collection across sites and programs;
• Share and standardize protocols, in cooperation with relevant partners including Indigenous Peoples and organizations, to include abundance, demographics, spatial structure, health, phenology and, for harvested species, harvest rates; and
• Ensure monitoring programs employ existing methods with new harmonized methods to allow data comparisons.
• Monitor health as an attribute and develop standardized health assessment protocols due to the anticipated impact of climate change on distribution and prevalence of disease.
• Monitor abiotic factors and drivers of change, across greater spatial distributions to assess the cumulative impacts of climate and other anthropogenic change on populations across their ranges.
• Conduct research on the vulnerabilities of populations to climate change and human impacts, and on genetic diversity and spatial structure of FECs.
• Increase collaboration using interdisciplinary and multi-knowledge approaches to share site- and population-specific information. This can improve monitoring and lead to better models to assess the vulnerabilities and resilience of specific populations.
• Address challenges in assessing abundance of FECs across the Arctic, including:
• reliability of abundance estimates, such as lack of precision and accuracy;
• changing baselines, such as changes in species distribution, sampling methodology, and areas monitored; and
• differences in frequency and spatial extent of monitoring.

Methods : Increased attention to methodology facilitates more precise and comparable results, standardized data collection, and ability to link regional monitoring to circumpolar efforts.

• Standardize how data is collected, managed, and reported, including field and sampling protocols, data collection methods, terminology, database harmonization and management, tools for data archiving and specimen libraries, including identification and curation.
• Create a harmonized, accessible, and long-term taxonomic framework for Arctic monitoring.
• Complete baseline studies and structured inventories to improve circumpolar data across FECs.
• Promote multi-species studies and long-term time series data.