Vegetation zonation in the North American Arctic has been characterized in a variety of ways, often inconsistently with European and Russian zonation schemes and within the North American literature (Walker 2000).

The greatest source of confusion lies in the use of the term “Polar Desert”. In the Russian and European traditions this refers to the climatic zone north of the limit of woody plants – Subzone 1 in the CAVM zonation. In much of the North American literature “Polar Desert” refers to barren areas in a range of climatic zones that have scant vegetation cover (Bliss 1997). These barrens are due to a variety of influences including climate, moisture, soil texture, and substrate chemistry. The CAVM zonation is based on distributions of plant species and functional types as controlled by climate.

We hope the zonation scheme described here will be widely adopted in order to promote better understanding and communication of vegetation zonation in the circumpolar Arctic. It will be useful in global modeling efforts investigating vegetation change and can be applied unambiguously on a circumpolar scale.