This report attempts to review the abundance, status and distribution of natural wild goose populations in the northern hemisphere. The report comprises three parts that 1) summarise key findings from the study and the methodology and analysis applied; 2) contain the individual accounts for each of the 68 populations included in this report; and 3) provide the datasets compiled for this study which will be made accessible on the Arctic Biodiversity Data Service.

Monthly snow cover extent (SCE) for Arctic land areas (>60° N) for (a) May and (b) June 1967–2020, a 54-year record. Anomalies are relative to the 1981–2010 average and standardised (each observation was differenced from the mean and divided by the standard deviation, and thus unitless). Solid black and red lines depict 5-year running means for North America and Eurasia, respectively. Filled circles are used to highlight 2020 anomalies. (Mudryk et al. 2020). STATE OF THE ARCTIC TERRESTRIAL BIODIVERSITY REPORT - Chapter 2 - Page 23 - Figure 2.3

Circumpolar trends in primary productivity as indicated by the maximum Normalised Difference Vegetation Index, 1982–2017. (a) Brown shading indicates negative MaxNDVI trends, green shading indicates positive MaxNDVI trends. (b) Chart of trends for the circumpolar Arctic, Eurasia, and North America. Modified from Frost et al. 2020. STATE OF THE ARCTIC TERRESTRIAL BIODIVERSITY REPORT - Chapter 3 - Page 30 - Figure 3.1

Trends in Arctic terrestrial bird population abundance for four taxonomic groupings in four global flyways. Data are presented as total number of taxa (species, subspecies). Modified from Smith et al. 2020. These broad patterns were generally consistent across flyways, with some exceptions. Fewer waterfowl populations increased in the Central Asian and East Asian–Australasian Flyways. The largest proportion of declining species was among the waders in all but the Central Asian Flyway where the trends of a large majority of waders are unknown. Although declines were more prevalent among waders than other taxonomic groups in both the African–Eurasian and Americas Flyways, the former had a substantially larger number of stable and increasing species than the latter (Figure 3-23). STATE OF THE ARCTIC TERRESTRIAL BIODIVERSITY REPORT - Chapter 3 - Page 55 - Figure 3.23

Change in forb, graminoid and shrub abundance by species or functional group over time based on local field studies across the Arctic, ranging from 5 to 43 years of duration. The bars show the proportion of observed decreasing, stable and increasing change in abundance, based on published studies. The darker portions of each bar represent a significant decrease, stable state, or increase, and lighter shading represents marginally significant change. The numbers above each bar indicate the number of observations in that group. Modified from Bjorkman et al. 2020. STATE OF THE ARCTIC TERRESTRIAL BIODIVERSITY REPORT - Chapter 3 - Page 31- Figure 3.2

Number of non-native plant taxa that have become naturalised across the Arctic. No naturalised non-native taxa are recorded from Wrangel Island, Ellesmere Land – northern Greenland, Anabar-Olenyok and Frans Josef Land. Modified from Wasowicz et al. 2020 STATE OF THE ARCTIC TERRESTRIAL BIODIVERSITY REPORT - Chapter 3 - Page 32 - Figure 3.4

Change in plant phenology over time based on published studies, ranging from 9 to 21 years of duration. The bars show the proportion of observations where timing of phenological events advanced (earlier) was stable or were delayed (later) over time. The darker portions of each bar represent visible decrease, stable state, or increase results, and lighter portions represent marginally significant change. The numbers above each bar indicate the number of observations in that group. Figure from Bjorkman et al. 2020. STATE OF THE ARCTIC TERRESTRIAL BIODIVERSITY REPORT - Chapter 3 - Page 31- Figure 3.3

Temporal trends of arthropod abundance for three habitat types at Zackenberg Research Station, Greenland, 1996–2016. Data are grouped as the FEC ‘arthropod prey for vertebrates’ and separated by habitat type. Solid lines indicate significant regression lines at the p<0.05. Modified from Gillespie et al. 2020a. STATE OF THE ARCTIC TERRESTRIAL BIODIVERSITY REPORT - Chapter 3 - Page 39 - Figure 3.9

Trend quality categories are: (1) data are lacking such that trends are unknown, (2) regional and site-specific monitoring allow for assumptions of trend, (3) international monitoring allows estimation of trend direction, and (4) rigorously designed international monitoring programmes yield estimates of precision. Modified from Smith et al. 2020. STATE OF THE ARCTIC TERRESTRIAL BIODIVERSITY REPORT - Chapte31 - Page 59 - Figure 3.26

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