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CRREL Permafrost Field Sites in Interior Alaska
Thomas
A.
Douglas, US Army Corps of Engineers, Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, thomas.a.douglas@usace.army.mil
(Presenter)
For the past five years, through a variety of projects and collaborations, we have been developing research infrastructure at a variety of sites around Fairbanks, Alaska. We will invest in these sites further over the next ten years. Sites are road accessible and represent a variety of ecotype and terrain types common in the boreal biome of interior Alaska. The goal is to accumulate a long term record of permafrost geomorphology, seasonal thaw, ground thermal state, vegetation and ecological processes, hydrology, snowpack composition, geophysical properties, and airborne and remote sensing characteristics. CRREL owns and operates facilities at two of the sites (Permafrost Tunnel and Farmer’s Loop) and these are suitable for manipulation experiments, installing permanent equipment, and establishing long-term measurements. We have acquired airborne LiDAR over all sites and at some we have 2 or 3 years of measurements. We have acquired airborne hyperspectral measurements at all sites. Each fall we measure seasonal thaw along 500 meter transects across each site. Thermistors measuring ground temperatures have been continuously measuring at each site for the past 3-5 years. For most sites we have deep (15 meter) boreholes and have measured electrical resistivity tomography and ground penetrating radar across site transects. End of season snow pack measurements are made at the sites. Associated Project(s): Poster Location ID: 77 Session Assigned: Permafrost and Hydrology
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