One of the needs of Arctic science is to maintain an influx of new students and ideas by integrating research and education. A second is to encourage the development of international collaboration needed to conduct research related to global patterns and expected changes in the circumpolar region. We addressed these needs during the summer
of 1999 as University students from the United States and Canada joined vegetation scientists from Canada, Germany, Norway, Russia, and the United States (Table 1, Fig. 1) in a transect from the northern to southern Canadian Arctic. Our goal was to investigate large-scale variation in vegetation related to climate and to involve students in Arctic research. We called this mobile workshop the 1999 Canadian Transect for the Circumpolar Arctic Vegetation Map.

The field class is Arctic Field Ecology, offered by the Itasca Biology Station at the University of Minnesota, and the research is a component of the Circumpolar Arctic Vegetation Map (CAVM) project (Walker and Lillie 1997). The field class and CAVM project were united in an effort to understand patterns of zonation in vegetation of the Canadian Arctic that are related to the north-south climatic gradient.