Disturbance and Recovery in Arctic Lands: An Ecological Perspective(25 NATO Science Partnership Subseries: 2)

The disturbance and recovery of arctic terrestrial ecosystems was the subject of a NATO Advanced Workshop held at the Arctic Centr, University of Lapland, Rovaniemi, Finland, in September 1995. The object of the meeting was to bring together researchers on arctic vegetation who share a concern for the preservation of arctic ecosystems. A particular aim of the meeting was to involve as many Russian colleagues as possible and to encourage younger scientists currently active in the Russian Arctic to come to Rovaniemi and make first-hand contact with colleagues from other countries with a view to planning further collaboration. This volume of papers therefore contains papers both from many younger researchers as well as from those who have been active in arctic plant ecology for many years. Disturbance is no new feature in the arctic environment. The factors that create the arctic habitat include marked climatic oscillations, physical disturbance and fluctuations in herbivore populations. The combination of environmental stress and disturbance from habitat instability and the possibility of periods of intense grazing imposes a particularly testing blend of adverse conditions for plant survival. The physical nature of the terrain with constant soil movement through cryoperturbation and solifluction contributes to the fragility of arctic habitats. To this scenario we must add disturbance by man in the unending quest for yet more natural resources, whether they be animal, vegetable or mineral or merely the concept of environmental experience, as in tourism.

Table of Contents:
I Arctic Communities, Past, Present and Future.- Arctic ecosystems and environmental change: perceptions from the past and predictions for the future.- Arctic phytogeography: plant diversity, floristic richness, migrations, and acclimation to changing climates.- Natural disturbance in high arctic vegetation.- An arctic environmental database for Europe and Asia.- II Arctic Communities Under Stress.- Transformation of northern ecosystems under stress: artic ecological changes from the perspective of ecosystem health.- Adaptation to disturbance as a part of the strategy of arctic and alpine plants: perspectives for management and restoration.- Interpreting environmental manipulation experiments in arctic ecosystems: are ‘disturbance’ responses properly accounted for?.- Role of nitrogen-fixing cryptogamic plants in the tundra.- Long-term damage to sub-arctic coastal ecosystems by geese: ecological indicators and measures of ecosystem dysfunction.- Disturbance and recovery of permafrost terrain.- Arctic ecosystem stability and disturbance: A West- Siberian case history.- Numeric simulation of thermokarst formation during disturbance.- Pollution impact on insect biodiversity in boreal forests: evaluation of effects and perspectives on recovery.- III. Heavy Metal Pollution.- Satellite remote sensing of the impact of industrial pollution on tundra biodiversity.- The structure of tundra plant cover as an ecological indicator in the Kola Peninsula.- Pollution of podzol soils by heavy metals.- Pollution-induced changes in nutritional status of pine forests on the northern tree line (Kola Peninsula).- Scots pine needle wax and air pollution in the subarctic.- Heavy metal concentrations in lake sediments as an index of freshwater ecosystem pollution.- Free radical oxidationactivity and pigment concentrations in leaves of mountain birches affected by aerial pollution.- IV Anthropogenic Disturbance.- Anthropogenic tundra disturbance in Canada and Russia.- Vegetation recovery following anthropogenic disturbances in Greenland.- Monitoring of radioactive contamination of the shores of the Kola Peninsula, Novaya Zemlya and Franz Josef Land.- V Oil Extraction and Ecosystem Disturbance.- Usinsk oil spill:Environmental catastrophe or routine event?.- Patterns and rates of, and factors affecting, natural recovery on land disturbed by oil development in Arctic Alaska.- Effects of winter seismic exploration on tundra vegetation and the soil thermal regime on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska.- VI Ecosystem Recovery at High Latitudes.- Arctic Alaskan vegetation disturbance and recovery.- Reproductive behaviour of arctic/alpine plants and ecological restoration.- Long-term tundra recovery in northern Alaska.- Long-term conservation strategies.- Self-recovery after technogenic and natural disturbances in the central part of the Yamal Peninsula (Western Siberian Arctic).- Carbon-nutrient interactions as constraints on recovery of Arctic ecosystems from disturbance.- Natural vegetation recovery on anthropogenically disturbed sites in North western Siberia.- The secondary successions of Arctic ecosystems in relation to tundra restoration.- Disturbance of tundra ecosystems and their restoration in the far north of Russia.- Color plates.