Arctic Plants, Ecosystems and Strategies

The expansion of both the rate and the impact of man's well-oiled technology have made his concern and understanding of the entire biosphere relevant, and indeed essential. The amount of critical knowledge about himself as well as his environment and resource base has, unfortunately, not been his prime concern nor is the amount of information required to operate "spaceship earth" readily attainable. We do not now know the minimum number of kinds of organisms re- quired for man's survival and for the orderly regeneration, regulation and self- cleansing necessary to perpetuate any ecosystem. There are many ample examples of misbehaving systems with unstable epidemic populations, declining productivi- ty, and polluted or toxic environments. What do we know and what do we need to know about the structure, function, and adaptive strategy of arctic tundra ecosystems? By ecosystem I refer to a unit of landscape, an ecological system composed of associated plants, animals, mi- crobes and their environment, Such systems are open not closed, they are dynamic not static, the biota co-exist and interact with their environment and with each other. The organisms have evolved various adaptions and the ecosystem has devel- oped complex interdependencies in order to survive. In developing a perspective rather than a review, I shall concentrate on plants, the primary biological pro- ducers of any ecosystem.