There is a great variation and heterogeneity among terrestrial Arctic ecosystems. This is further described as biogeographical areas in the Annotated Checklist of the Pan-Arctic Flora (Elven et al. 2020), as vegetation zones (Walker et al. 2005, Raynolds et al 2019) or as ecoregions recognised by Terrestrial Ecoregions of the World (Olson et al. 2001). The START focuses on high and low Arctic regions consistent with the CAVM’s subzones A to E, as shown in Figure 1-2 and Figure 2-1 STATE OF THE ARCTIC TERRESTRIAL BIODIVERSITY REPORT - Chapter 2 - Page 19 - Figure 2.1

Results of circumpolar assessment of lake zooplankton, focused just on crustaceans, and indicating (a) the location of crustacean zooplankton stations, underlain by circumpolar ecoregions; (b) ecoregions with many crustacean zooplankton stations, colored on the basis of alpha diversity rarefied to 25 stations; (c) all ecoregions with crustacean zooplankton stations, colored on the basis of alpha diversity rarefied to 10 stations; (d) ecoregions with at least two stations in a hydrobasin, colored on the basis of the dominant component of beta diversity (species turnover, nestedness, approximately equal contribution, or no diversity) when averaged across hydrobasins in each ecoregion. State of the Arctic Freshwater Biodiversity Report - Chapter 4 - Page 58 - Figure 4-25

Arthropods (e.g., shrimps, crabs, sea spiders, amphipods, isopods) dominate taxon numbers in all Arctic regions, followed by polychaetes (e.g., bristle worms) and mollusks (e.g., gastropods, bivalves). Other taxon groups are diverse in some regions, such as bryozoans in the Kara Sea, cnidarians in the Atlantic Arctic, and foraminiferans in the Arctic deep-sea basins. This pattern is biased, however, by the meiofauna inclusion for the Arctic Basin (macro- and meiofauna size ranges overlap substantially in deep-sea fauna, so nematodes and foraminiferans are included) and the influence of a lack of specialists for some difficult taxonomic groups. STATE OF THE ARCTIC MARINE BIODIVERSITY REPORT - <a href="https://arcticbiodiversity.is/findings/benthos" target="_blank">Chapter 3</a> - Page 89 - Box figure 3.3.1 Each region of the Pan Arctic has been sampled with a set of different sampling gears, including grab, sledge and trawl, while other areas has only been sampled with grab. Here is the complete species/taxa number and the % distribution of species/taxa in main phyla, per region of the Pan Arctic.

Seasonal abundance (1000 individuals m- 2) of sea ice meiofauna at landfast sea ice (Barrow, 2005-2006, A and C) and pack ice (North of Svalbard, 2015, B and D). A and B show larval stages (polychaete juveniles and nauplii, respectively), while C and D show nematodes and harpacticoid copepods, respectively. Circles represent individual cores (n = 107 for A and C, and 39 for B and D), shading the extent of minimum as well as maximum values, and blue line indicates mean values. STATE OF THE ARCTIC MARINE BIODIVERSITY REPORT - <a href="https://arcticbiodiversity.is/findings/sea-ice-biota" target="_blank">Chapter 3</a> - Page 43 - Figure 3.1.5 From the report draft: "In addition to showing composition and peak abundance ranges, we illustrate the phenology of ice meiofauna over the ice-covered season in the entire combined data set. For this purpose, the data were normalized to the daylight hours at each location during the date of sampling using R package geosphere (Hijmans 2015) and a method described in Forsythe et al. (1995). This was necessary, because ‘spring’ arrives earlier at lower latitudes than at higher latitudes, so that using month or day of year would obscure the pan-Arctic integration of the data. Other influential factors such as snow depth, ice thickness and nutrient concentrations were not accounted for in this analysis."

Figure 4 23 Species richness of aquatic macrophytes excluding mosses and algae in five geographic regions of the Arctic. Ame = North America, Fen = Fennoscandia, Far = Faroes, Ice = Iceland, Gre = Greenland. State of the Arctic Freshwater Biodiversity Report - Chapter 4 - Page 55 - Figure 4-22

Figure 3-1 Long-term trends in ice duration (as days) in the River Torne (upper plot) and Lake Torneträsk (lower plot) at 68° north on the Scandinavian peninsula. Lines show smooth fit. Data source: Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute. State of the Arctic Freshwater Biodiversity Report - Chapter 3 - Page 19 - Figure 3-1

Figure 4 9 Local diatom species richness of Arctic lake surface sediments, showing (left) richness as a function of latitude, and (right) site-specific richness. A LOESS smoother (blue line) with a span of 0.75 and a 95% confidence interval (grey shading) was applied to the data (left) to better highlight the general trend. Coloured circles on the map indicate the species richness at the sampling sites. State of the Arctic Freshwater Biodiversity Report - Chapter 4 - Page 37 - Figure 4-9

Figure 4-16 Map showing the magnitude of change in diatom assemblages for downcore samples, with beta diversity used as a measure of the compositional differences between samples at different depths along the core. Boundaries for the beta diversity categories are based on distribution quartiles (0-0.1, 0.1-1.24, 1.24-1.5, >1.5), where the lowest values (blue dots) represent the lowest degree of change in diatom assemblage composition along the length of the core in each lake. State of the Arctic Freshwater Biodiversity Report - Chapter 2 - Page 15 - Figure 2-1

Maximum LTA (long-term average) August air temperatures for the circumpolar region, with ecoregions used in the analysis of the SAFBR outlined in black. Source for temperature layer: Fick and Hijmans (2017). State of the Arctic Freshwater Biodiversity Report - Chapter 5 - Page 89 - Figure 5-5

Figure 2-2 Arctic freshwater boundaries from the Arctic Council’s Arctic Biodiversity Assessment developed by CAFF, showing the three sub-regions of the Arctic, namely the high (dark purple), low (purple) and sub-Arctic (light purple)