Nicola Arndt und Matthias Pohl - Neobiota

1 Introduction
A dominant feature in the legend of the Map of the Natural Vegetation of Europe (BOHN et al. 2000) is
the use of zonal names. Arctic polar desert, northern/middle/southern arctic tundra and arctic shrub
tundra are keywords for areas north of the polar treeline. Further to the south forests of Picea and
Pinus are characterized as northern, middle and southern boreal. In addition to these coniferous
forests, map polygons dominated by Betula pubescens are basically divided into a western and an
eastern group, and the western group in Norway is subdivided in a series of units from the north to the
south.
In most cartographic presentations, zonal map and vegetation map approaches are kept apart, and in
the botanical traditions of some countries, the different nature of these two approaches is not always
realized. In North Europe there is a strong tradition in both types of mapping, but their joint
cartographic presentation has mostly a Russian tradition. This integration, which has been made in the
Map of the Natural Vegetation of Europe, is therefore exciting to those concerned with the
northernmost areas in Europe, but not familiar with the Russian tradition.
Bioclimatic zonation based on botanical criteria is a topic that has attracted numerous contrasting
contributions concerning the number of zonal units, the criteria used to separate them, not to mention
their names. A particular challenging task is to compare areas with oceanic and continental climates.
The aim of the present paper is to evaluate how the zonal units have been treated in the Map of the
Natural Vegetation of Europe for the northernmost areas in Europe, and how the system used here
agrees with other proposals. A particular aspect will be the comparison between oceanic and
continental areas, and climatic data will be studied to see how they correlate with the mapped zones.
The area studied here includes Svalbard, Fennoscandia north of the Polar Circle, and in Russia, all
European Arctic islands, the Kola Peninsula, and a belt around the White Sea and eastwards along the
Arctic coast comprising the European part of Russia.
2 Material and methods
Data from 46 Norwegian, 9 Swedish, 6 Finnish and 127 Russian meteorological stations have been
used. The Norwegian data have been compiled from FØRLAND et al. (1997) and AUNE (1993). Finnish
data, marked in the table as source 8, are from HEINO & HELLSTEN (1983), and Swedish data from
ALEXANDERSSON et al. (1991). Russian data are from TERZIEV (1965) and GIDROMETEOIZDAT
(1965).
The Norwegian and Swedish data are from the normal period 1961-1990 and the Finnish data from
1961-1980. The data from Russia are older and from various periods not cited here, but some stations
with short observation periods have been omitted. The data are compared here with no attempt on
calibration for non-overlapping observation periods.
The zonal positions of the meteorological stations have been transferred to a numeric system, where
each zone or subzone has been given a range of 1.0. Each station is estimated to be in the northern,
central or southern part of the zone or in the transition to the warmer or colder neighbouring zone. In
flat continental areas, like most parts of Russia, this is a simple cartographic interpretation. In a country
like Norway with a mountain and fjord-dominated topography the interpretation follows DAHL et
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