A new “plant-to-planet” Toolik-Arctic Geobotanical Atlas (T-AGA) (http://www.arcticatlas.org/) is designed to meet research and site management needs at IAB's Toolik Field Station in northern Alaska. The atlas currently presents seven different scales of maps from the circumpolar Arctic down to species within 1 x 1-m plots. The atlas is still in progress, but the intent is to eventually provide all the maps produced by the first author and many collaborators during 35-years of vegetation mapping and research in northern Alaska and the circumpolar Arctic.

This talk focuses on examples of how the map hierarchy is being used to address questions related to a multi-scale analysis of Arctic climate change. This is part of the "Greening of the Arctic" project of the International Polar Year (http://www.alaska.edu/ipy/news/AGUWalker.xml, http://classic.ipy.org/development/eoi/details.php?id=569#TOP), The ideas may prove useful for other Arctic Observatories and users that desire an international approach to vegetation change analysis.

Donald "Skip" Walker is a professor of biology with the Institute of Arctic Biology at UAF and director of the Alaska Geobotany Center at IAB.

Walker's areas of research specialization include: tundra, snow, and landscape ecology, vegetation mapping, quantitative ecological methods, vegetation of northern Alaska and the Arctic, biocomplexity of patterned ground, landscape response to climate change, geographic information systems and remote sensing, and disturbance and recovery of Arctic ecosystems.

Recent research projects include: Greening of the Arctic, NASA Yamal Project, Toolik-Arctic Geobotanical Atlas, North American Arctic Transect, Biocomplexity of Frost Boil Ecosystems, Circumpolar Arctic Vegetation Map, and Arctic Transitions in the Land-Atmosphere System.