Biodiversity and Change

The results of this research increase our knowledge of the diversity and distribution of Canadian Arctic vascular plants, which is fundamental to understanding the impact of environmental changes. The goals of this research are to produce a new web-based flora of Canadian Arctic vascular plants, develop a collection database of all northern Canadian plant collections, produce DNA barcodes for all Canadian Arctic vascular plants, resolve taxonomic problems in the Arctic flora, and analyze patterns of species and genetic diversity across the Canadian Arctic. This work provides baseline data for conservation, ecological monitoring and predictive modeling studies.

Principal investigators: Lynn Gillespie, Jeff Saarela