Field Planning 2021
Following consultations with project leads and partner organizations, the 2021 L-band SAR (UAVSAR) and AVIRIS-ng Airborne Remote Sensing Campaigns were postponed until 2022 because of continuing COVID-related travel constraints on conducting the essential supporting fieldwork. Nevertheless, a number of teams have still been able to conduct field work in 2021, as summarized here. This summary is in alphabetical order by PI, and should be considered planned work as field plans can change. Following the 2021 field season, these details will be updated.
| PI | 2021 Plans | Location | When |
|---|---|---|---|
| Baltzer | Multiple field plans in Northwest Territories | Northwest Territories, Canada | Throughout summer 2021 |
| Butman | Completed a survey of 12 lakes within the Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge. Sampling
at each lake included carbon chemistry and flux measurements of open water
and littoral vegetation. To capture seasonal gradients, a second campaign is planned for the end of August. In addition, radiocarbon samples of methane and carbon dioxide will be collected at each lake. Clayton Elder will assist with the later field campaign. |
Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska | June 14 – 21, 2021 August 20 – September 1, 2021 |
| Cook | Forest service ground crews will be out this year. They are local to Alaska. | Alaska | Summer 2021 |
| Douglas | Continue long term soil temperature, active layer depth, geophysics, vegetation, coring, and other measurements at Fairbanks area sites: Farmer's Loop, Creamer's Field, Permafrost Tunnel, Bonanza Creek, Tanana Flats | Alaska | Summer 2021 |
| Eitel | Small team to remove instrumentation in Fairbanks and north on Haul Rd towards Toolik. | Fairbanks and Dalton Hwy, Alaska | April 12 – 19, 2021 |
| Frankenberg | Our current plan is to have a field team in the summer (July/August) to take field measurements of needle spectra and needle fluorescence and pigments during the diurnal cycle. Team will use tower measurements from Delta Junction and Old Black Spruce sites. | Delta Junction, AK and OBS in Sask. | Aug 1 – 10, 2021 |
| Goetz |
NAU GEODE Lab group members Pat Burns and Logan Berner are trekking with Roman Dial for 10 days in the Brooks Range to measure trees that have advanced beyond historical treeline. | Cutler Valley, Brooks Range, North Slope, Alaska | July 2021 |
| Grosse (AWI) | Completed Perma-X airborne campaign with AWI Polar-6 plane over multiple West Alaska regions. Our general focus was on permafrost disturbances (lake change and impacts, coastal erosion, fire scars, thermokarst initiation and coastal wetlands, thaw slumps, and beaver ponds and dams). Instrumentation includes the DLR Modular Aerial Camera System (MACS), a high-res stereo camera system with RGB and NIR (~10-20 cm ground resolution at our flying altitudes); and a fully waveform Riegl Q680i LiDAR. | Kotzebue (base): Baldwin Peninsula, Northern Seward Peninsula, Central Seward Peninsula, Noatak Valley, Kobuk and Selawik regions | 25 June – 12 July 2021 |
| Hensley/ Naiara | Interest in fieldwork in Delta Junction and BERMS. | ||
| Huemmrich | Tweedie team
will have a skeleton crew that Huemmrich can use to do some sampling.
Sarah Sackett will collect some field measurements for the team as well. Samples from Alaska will be sent to Maryland for measurements. |
Utqiagvik Fairbanks |
July 2021 July 2021 |
| Iwahana | Displacement, thaw depth, and soil moisture survey along the Dalton between Ice Cut and Sagwon. We will also conduct similar fieldwork in Seward Penn. (Kougarok) with NGEE collaborators. | Alaska (Dalton / Seward Penn.) | Aug 14–23 (Dalton), Aug 30 – Sep 3 |
| Kirchner | Automated continuous monitoring, and maybe vegetation field crews in summer 2021. Monitoring program plans to go to the field sites this summer and will make depth to frozen ground measurements. There are also plans for vegetation monitoring in Katmai and Lake Clark. | Southwest Alaska | Throughout 2021 |
| Maguire | Joining Frankenberg team for leaf–level spectral observations and calibration of tower instrument at Delta Junction | Delta Junction, AK | August 1 – 10, 2021 |
| Miller | Katey Walter Anthony is doing various types of fieldwork
related to methane. Exploring a summer field trip along the Haul Road between
Fairbanks and Prudhoe Bay; we are also interested in exploring options for
field work in the Minto Flats.
Clayton Elder will be assisting with methane flux measurement and 14C sampling at Big Trail Lake and a series of lakes in the Yukon Flats (Collaboration with Butman team) |
Fairbanks
region – Big Trail Lake
Yukon Flats |
March 14 –
29, 2021 (Clayton) August 15 – Sept. 1 |
| Myers-Smith, Isla (Team Shrub) | I have a 2-3 person crew in the Kluane Region collecting hyperspectral leaf samples and conducting phenology and plant trait measurements (with a focus on capturing shrub leaf spectra across the growing season in relation to plant phenology) in the boreal and alpine in collaboration with the Canadian Airborne Observatory Project and Phil Townsend's ABoVE project. | Kluane Lake, Yukon | 17 June – 17 August, 2021 |
| Natali/Watts | Small team to
inspect Soil Respiration Station instrumentation in Alaska, may go into the
field for a short time.
Christina Minions will visit Eight Mile, Bonanza Creek, Hess Creek soil respiration sites in May and September/October 2021. Jennifer Watts & Claudia Czimczik + 2 grad students at Hess Creek burned/unburned sites to install 14C sampling wells Possible SRS visit and data download at YKD sites, depending on regional covid-19 status and logistics. |
Alaska | May 20 – 24,
2021 August 1 – 31, 2021 September 1– October 15, 2021 August 16–19, 2021 September 2021 |
| Oechel | Ivotuk | July–August 2021 | |
| Potter | Dr. Diane Huebner (2020-2022 NPP with me). Diane Hubner is a postdoc on this project who lives in Alaska, as does her field assistant. She will visit Bonanza Creek and other areas (including areas disturbed by fire) during 2021 and 2022. Project Title: Assessing resilience in Alaskan boreal forest to climate-wildfire interactions | Bonanza Creek and other areas (including areas disturbed by fire) | Throughout 2021 |
| Quinton | Dehcho Collaborative on Permafrost | Scotty Creek and multiple sites throughout the Dehcho (NWT) region. | March – September, 2021. |
| Rocha | Thaw depth and eddy covariance fluxes at 3 sites within the southern end of the Anaktuvuk River fire scar (see Rocha, A.V. and G.R. Shaver (2011) Post-fire energy exchange in arctic tundra: the importance and climatic implications of burn severity. Global Change Biology. 17(9): 2831-2841, doi:10.1111/j.1365-2486.2011.02441.x. for site information) | North Slope Alaska | Summer 2021 |
| Schaefer | The Schaefer team will do ALT and soil moisture surveys around Fairbanks.We will survey Bonanza Creek, Delta Junction, the permafrost tunnel, Creamer's Field, and several other sites around Fairbanks. | Bonanza Creek, Delta Junction, the permafrost tunnel, Creamer's Field | August 12 – 22, 2021 |
| Turner | Various types of fieldwork related to hydrology and permafrost, carbon dynamics, and disturbance. | Old Crow Flats, Yukon | Summer 2021 – if able to get a field team into the field |
| Watts, Yang, Epstein | Soil moisture
probe and active layer probe for use during summer field season. We will install two SIF instruments, one for
the deciduous site, and one for the evergreen site. We will measure
leaf-level fluorescence, canopy SIF, and canopy reflectance.
Normalized Microwave Reflection Index data from tower-mounted GPS in deciduous and coniferous forests (above and below canopy) collected. |
Caribou Poker Flats, Alaska | May 4 –
September 27, 2021 May – December 2021 |
| Watts/Farina | PhD student Mary Farina + assistant at Big Trail Lake near Fairbanks. Multispectral drone surveys for water/veg mapping. CO2 & CH4 surveys using Licor & chamber. Weather station data + soil temp/moisture data collection. | Alaska | July 1-20, 2021 |
| Welker | Chamber CO2 fluxes in ambient, deep and shallow snow treatments with and without ITEX warming OTC's from tussock tundra.Flux measurements are 2 x per week plus measurements of phenology and root growth with mini-rhizotrons. | Toolik Lake, Field station | mid-June to September 2021 |
| Wilson/NGEE Collaborators | Possible plans to take a small group to Seward Penn by late summer. |
