START - Figure 3.20 - Simplified illustration of the global migratory bird flyways

There are few true Arctic specialist birds that remain in the Arctic throughout their annual cycle. They include the willow and rock ptarmigan (Lagopus lagopus and L. muta), gyrfalcon (Falco rusticolus), snowy owl (Bubo scandiacus), Arctic redpoll (Carduelis hornemanni) and northern raven (Corvus corax)—a cosmopolitan species with resident populations in the Arctic. All other terrestrial Arctic-breeding bird species migrate to warmer regions during the northern winter, connecting the Arctic to all corners of the globe. Hence, their distributions are influenced by the routes they follow. These distinct migration routes are referred to as flyways and are defined by a combination of ecological and political boundaries and differ in spatial scale. The CBMP refers to the traditional four north–south flyways, in addition to a circumpolar flyway representing the few species that remain largely within the Arctic year-round (Figure 3-20).

STATE OF THE ARCTIC TERRESTRIAL BIODIVERSITY REPORT - Chapter 3 - Page 48- Figure 3.20

Date (Publication): 2021-05

Edition: http://geo.abds.is:8081/demodem/editioin

Status: Completed

Point of contact

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF)	Tom Barry	tom@caff.is	Point of contact
Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF)	Kári Fannar Lárusson	kari@caff.is	Custodian

Maintenance and update frequency: Unknown

Theme

START
CAFF
Terrestrial
Flyway
Birds

Place

GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0

Land use
Land cover

Access constraints: Copyright

Use constraints: otherRestictions

Spatial representation type: Vector

Language: English

Character set: UTF8

Topic category

Biota
Climatology, meteorology, atmosphere

Begin date: 2021-01-01

Supplemental Information: You can customize the template to suit your needs. You can add

and remove fields and fill out default information (e.g. contact details).

Fields you can not change in the default view may be accessible in the more

comprehensive (and more complex) advanced view. You can even use the XML editor

to create custom structures, but they have to be validated by the system, so

know what you do :-)

Reference system identifier: WGS 1984

Digital transfer options

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
WWW:LINK-1.0-http--link
OGC:WMS-1.1.1-http-get-map
WWW:LINK-1.0-http--link	https://arcticbiodiversity.is/terrestrial	Webpage
WWW:DOWNLOAD-1.0-http--download	https://geo.abds.is/geonetwork/srv/api/records/43b5911f-3879-49a8-b8d1-58db4d2313e1/attachments/START_Flyways_fig3.20-01.png	START_Flyways_fig3.20-01.png

Hierarchy level: Dataset

Conformance result

Date (Publication)

Metadata

File identifier: 43b5911f-3879-49a8-b8d1-58db4d2313e1 XML

Metadata language: English

Character set: UTF8

Date stamp: 2026-02-19T17:46:22.266030921Z

Metadata standard name: ISO 19115:2003/19139

Metadata standard version: 1.0

Metadata author

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF)	Hólmgrímur Helgason	hoddi@caff.is	Publisher

Overviews

Spatial extent

Provided by

Access to the catalogue

Read here the full details and access to the data.