Rapid Assessment of Circum-Arctic Ecosystem Resilience (RACER): Western Greenland

WWF’S RAPID ASSESSMENT OF CIRCUMARCTIC ECOSYSTEM RESILIENCE (RACER) presents a new tool for identifying and mapping places of conservation importance throughout the Arctic.

Recognizing that conservation efforts targeting the vulnerability of arctic habitats and species are not keeping pace with accelerating climate change, RACER instead locates sources of ecological strength. RACER finds places that generate what scientists call ecosystem resilience to fortify the wider ecological regions in which these places are found. RACER then looks ahead to whether these wellsprings of resilience will persist in a climate-altered future.

The RACER method has two parts. The first part maps the current location of land or sea features (such as mountains, wetlands, polynyas, river deltas, etc.) that are home to exceptional growth of vegetation and animals (productivity) and varieties of living things and habitats (diversity). These key features are especially productive and diverse because the characteristics that make them up (e.g., the terrain of mountains or the outflow at river mouths) act as drivers of ecological vitality. The exceptional vitality of these key features–in the places where they are currently found–is what makes them local sources of resilience for the ecosystems and ecosystem services of their wider regions (ecoregions). The second part of RACER tests whether these key features will continue to provide region-wide resilience despite predicted climate-related changes to temperature, rain, snowfall, sea ice, and other environmental factors important to living systems. Changes to these climate variables affect the drivers of ecological vitality (which depend on these variables) at key features. RACER uses forecast changes to these climate variables to predict the future vitality of key features and the likely persistence of ecosystem resilience for arctic ecoregions through the remainder of this century.

RACER’s new method focuses conservation and management attention on the importance of minimizing environmental disturbance to places that are–and will be for the remainder of this century – sources of ecosystem resilience in the Arctic. In particular, RACER’s ecosystem-based approach equips resource managers and conservationists with new targets for their efforts–managing not just our impact on species and habitats but on the combinations of geographical, climatic, and ecological characteristics that drive ecosystem functioning in the Far North. Identifying the sources of resilience for region-wide arctic ecosystems and nurturing them into the future may be the best hope for the survival of the Arctic’s unique identity—including its habitats, plants, animals and the ecological services that northern people and cultures depend upon.

Source: Christie, P. and Sommerkorn, M. 2012. RACER: Rapid Assessment of Circum-Arctic Ecosystem Resilience, 2nd ed. Ottawa, Canada: WWF Global Arctic Program. 72 pp.

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