The Greenland vascular plant herbarium of the University of Copenhagen

Abstract

By the establishment of the Greenland Botanical Survey in 1962 at the Botanical Museum, University of Copenhagen, an era of regular and systematic exploration of the vascular plant flora of Greenland was initiated and it ended in 1996, when funding ended. Preceding this period, the vascular plant flora was mainly known from the results of more sporadic botanical investigations mostly in low arctic West and East Greenland, but after the 1980s, investigations expanded to include the more inaccessible high arctic Northeast and North Greenland. Nowadays, vascular plant species have been collected from most regions of Greenland. So far, three regional phytogeographical studies of South, North, and West Greenland have been published, and at present, two papers dealing with the vascular plant flora of East Greenland are ready for publication. These studies will be the basis for a synopsis of the phytogeography of Greenland and a new edition of the Flora of Greenland. The published distribution maps from South, West, and North Greenland based on these collections have been digitized and used for modelling the regional vegetation and flora and its relation to past glaciations and current climate. The specimens from East Greenland have been entered into a database and will be available for future modelling projects.

Keywords

• biodiversity
• vascular plant flora
• phytogeography
• greenland
• vegetation studies
• environmental assessments
• history