IPY-Back to the Future: Assessing Long-term Patterns of Change in Arctic and Alpine Terrestrial Ecosystems

In the absence of long-term monitoring, revisiting, re-sampling and assessing environmental change that has occurred at Arctic terrestrial research sites established several decades ago represent a largely untapped change detection capacity. The primary objective of 'Back to the Future,' a three-year International Polar Year (IPY) project (#214), is to determine how key structural and functional characteristics of high latitude/altitude terrestrial ecosystems have changed over the past 25 or more years and assess if such trajectories of change are likely to continue in the future. In this presentation, we report an update of the re-sampling efforts in several Arctic locations in both North America and Eurasia. Understanding how various regions of the Arctic respond differently with respect to warmer temperatures will allow for increased effectiveness in predicting how terrestrial ecosystems will function in the future Arctic. Additionally, we report on the first International Back to the Future meeting held recently, present our near future plans and relay our openness to increased collaboration.