Vegetation ecologists at ACCS monitor vegetation status and trends, classify plant communities, and investigate plant community composition relative to environmental gradients. Vegetation monitoring enables the efficient management of natural resources and helps inform the decisions of natural resource planners. We continue to develop vegetation monitoring protocols and field methods in cooperation with state and federal agencies for a variety of ecoregions in Alaska. Our ongoing monitoring projects throughout boreal and arctic Alaska are providing data to answer questions related to landscape and ecosystem change. These data are available, along with other ground-based, extensive ecological survey data throughout Alaska, in the Alaska Vegetation (AKVEG) Database. ACCS also assesses the conservation status and trend (i.e., by assigning conservation status ranks) to plant communities that have been formally described for Alaska.
