Upland areas like this ridge in the Waring Mountains ring the Selawik Refuge in northwest Alaska. Photo by Steve Hillebrand, August 2006.

Staff at Selawik Refuge recently received the exciting news that the Refuge was accepted as a new site in a world-wide long-term observation network in alpine environments.  The network, headquartered in Vienna, Austria, is known as GLORIA (Global Observation Research Initiative in Alpine Environments).  The majority of the network’s existing 47 sites are located in Europe.  Selawik Refuge will be the first GLORIA site in the North American Arctic.

The data collected in this program will be used to assess and predict losses in biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in fragile alpine ecosystems which are under accelerating climate change pressures.

The idea to take part in this international initiative originated with FWS Regional Botanist, Stephen Talbot.  A strict sampling protocol must be followed with the data maintained by GLORIA’s Vienna office as part of a shared database.  Stephen Talbot, Canadian bryologist W.B. Scholfield, and a GLORIA scientist from Vienna plan to visit the Refuge this summer to establish four GLORIA sites.  For more information about this global program, visit their web site at http://www.gloria.ac.at or contact Stephen Talbot (stephen_talbot@fws.gov).  Maybe your refuge can “Go Global” too!