EDI Staging Environment
Climate records for Fairbanks (UAF Experiment Station) from 1904 to 2019 were acquired from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cdo-web/). Additional data were obtained for the Nenana station (about 70 km southwest of Fairbanks), to fill in small data gaps (particularly precipitation/snow depth ruler measurements) in the Fairbanks record. We attributed the data with fields for summer (May-September) and winter periods (October-April) and hydrologic year (October-September) and calculated mean air temperature, precipitation, and snow depth by seasonal period (average of daily values) and year. The broad summer and winter periods were of interest because warmer and wetter summers increase soil heat input and warmer and snowier winters reduce soil heat loss.
Vegetation composition and cover of fens, scrub, and forests was sampled to assess effects of thermokarst on vegetation change. Plant cover was determined by point-sampling at 100 points (including repetitive “hits” for all layers) distributed along 5 equally spaced rows (4-m long, 20 points per row) across the 10-m long plot. The plots were examined for additional species and a cover of 0.1% was assigned to all species not captured in the point sampling. Taxonomy follows that of the Flora of Alaska provisional checklist (https://floraofalaska.org/provisional-checklist/).
This data set contains water pressure/level and temperature measurements collected every two hours at seven sites within fens on the Tanana Flats, central Alaska . The data were collected inconjuction with a project to assess patterns and rates of thermokarst in lowland ecosystems in central Alaska. The project was funded by the U.S. Army SERDP program.
EDI is a collaboration between the University of New Mexico and the University of Wisconsin – Madison, Center for Limnology:
