The Circumpolar Biodiversity Monitoring Program: Towards Integrated Arctic Biodiversity Monitoring

In response to the global importance of the Arctic’s biodiversity, the increasing pressures on Arctic biodiversity and human communities, and our limited capacity to monitor and understand these changes, the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) recommended that long-term Arctic biodiversity monitoring be expanded and enhanced.  In response to these recommendations, the Arctic Council’s Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna Working Group (CAFF) began development of the Circumpolar Biodiversity Monitoring Program (CBMP).

The CBMP is a mechanism for harmonizing and enhancing long-term biodiversity monitoring efforts across the Arctic in order to improve our ability to detect and report on significant trends and pressures. The resulting information will be used to assist policy and decision making at the global, national, regional and local levels. 

Considering the size and complexity of the circumpolar Arctic, it is essential that the CBMP promote and develop an integrated ecosystem-based approach to monitoring.  Such an approach involves monitoring that bridges ecosystems, habitat and species and demands information not only on the status and trends in Arctic biodiversity, but also on their underlying causes. It is critical that this information be collected and made available to generate effective strategies for adapting to the changes now taking place in the Arctic —a process that ultimately depends on rigorous, integrated, and efficient monitoring programs that have the power to detect change within a reasonable time frame.

Towards this end, the CBMP will facilitate the integration and coordination of a multidisciplinary, integrated ecosystem-based approach to research and monitoring through the development of five integrated Expert Monitoring Groups (Marine, Coastal, Freshwater, Terrestrial Vegetation and Terrestrial Fauna).  Each group will be comprised of existing place-based and network-based research and monitoring programs utilizing both community-based and other scientific monitoring approaches, representing a diversity of expertise and monitoring capabilities.  Special attention will be paid to community-based observations and citizen science, understanding the value and significance of local people living in the Arctic environment and their contribution to the monitoring of Arctic biodiversity. 

Over the next five years, the CBMP will focus its efforts on the following key areas:

• Developing a strategy for building and maintaining a comprehensive and cost-effective circumpolar monitoring   program that addresses current deficiencies;
• Coordinating and integrating biodiversity monitoring programs and promoting standardized measures and harmonized data protocols;
• Assessing current monitoring capacity and design to identify elemental, geographic, and statistical design deficiencies and inefficiencies;
• Interpreting, integrating, and communicating existing biodiversity information (establishing statistical baselines and retrospective assessments);
• Developing data-management structures and a Web-based data portal for the synthesis, analysis, and dissemination of biodiversity information;
• Identifying and initiating pilot monitoring projects, where clear gaps exist;
• Reporting on the status of Arctic biodiversity and the issues facing it, using diverse formats for communication, education and outreach at the global, national, regional and local levels.