To Whom It May Concern: My name is Anthony Zerafa, and I am a Biology Master’s student at McGill University in Montréal, Québec, Canada. I previously visited Nunavut in 2016 when I spent 6 weeks on Cornwallis Island and Axel Heiberg Island as part of a McGill University undergraduate program intended to train students in Arctic field science. The proposed undertaking is a scientific research project with the goal of monitoring communities of terrestrial arthropods (insects, spiders, and springtails) on Axel Heiberg Island in Nunavut. Arthropods are the dominant animal group found in terrestrial Arctic ecosystems, which makes them ideal study organisms for monitoring Arctic environmental change. The High Arctic locality of Axel Heiberg Island may yield valuable information on the current composition of High Arctic arthropod communities, because the terrain is a mosaic of highly variable “microhabitats” that differ in plant cover and soil moisture. However, arthropod communities on Axel Heiberg Island have never previously been subject to any dedicated study. To address this significant gap in our knowledge of High Arctic ecosystems, I propose to survey arthropod communities on Axel Heiberg Island as the foundational step for a long-term monitoring program. Located approximately at coordinates 79º26’N 90º46’W in western-central Axel Heiberg Island, the McGill Arctic Research Station (MARS) will serve as a basecamp for research activities. MARS is only accessible by air, with aircraft operating out of the Polar Continental Shelf Program (PCSP) in Resolute. Logistical support for my 2018 project is included in the PCSP logistics request form that was filled out by Dr. Wayne Pollard (Director, MARS) under “MARS baseline studies”. With the exception of the seasonally occupied MARS, Axel Heiberg Island is uninhabited. The nearest settlement to MARS is the Eureka research base on Ellesmere Island, approximately 111km to the northeast. The nearest Inuit community to MARS is Grise Fiord on Ellesmere Island, approximately 382km to the southeast. In order to gain a complete picture of arthropod community compositions over time, fieldwork will take place over the entire duration of MARS’ summer operational period (from the start of July to the end of August). Although the current proposed project will not take more than two summer field seasons, it is the goal of this applicant to turn the project into a long-term monitoring program that will occur annually over many years. This project entails a thorough study of microhabitats with their associated arthropod communities on Axel Heiberg Island. I propose to catalogue every microhabitat that can be identified within the enclosed basin next to MARS, where Colour Lake is located. A hyperspectral camera (possibly mounted on an aerial drone) can reveal differences in terrain cover more easily than the naked eye, and therefore this is the most objective method for mapping the microhabitats within the study area. Once microhabitats in the study area are identified, I will place a transect of yellow pitfall traps (small yellow dishes, about 18cm in diameter each) within each microhabitat to collect flying and ground-dwelling arthropods. At the location where each pitfall trap is placed, I will also take a soil sample for the extraction of soil-dwelling arthropods. Such thorough collecting across the entire season will provide a complete picture of the arthropod communities that are established on Axel Heiberg Island, as well as the microhabitats with which they are associated. This dedicated survey will also lay the foundations for future arthropod monitoring on Axel Heiberg Island. Climate change has in recent history driven significant and rapid changes to the Arctic environment, and continues to alter Arctic ecosystems at an unprecedented rate. The effects of this rapid environmental change are however not well understood, as there remain significant gaps in our basic understanding of the natural history of Arctic ecosystems. Because they are abundant in Arctic ecosystems, arthropods make for ideal study organisms for detecting Arctic environmental change. The understudied arthropod communities on Axel Heiberg Island provide an excellent opportunity to fill a gap in our understanding of High Arctic ecosystems, and the establishment of a long-term monitoring program can then be used to detect environmental change over time. But in order for a monitoring program to successfully detect changes to these Arctic ecosystems over time, we must already have a basic understanding of the arthropod communities that are already naturalised on the island. Because even this baseline information is currently lacking, intensive surveying is therefore the first step for the program.