SGER: The Anaktuvuk River Fire of 2007: A Test Bed for NEON Technology and Protocols in Northern Alaska

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This SGER award will provide funds for Redeployable sensor towers and sensor networks to investigate the initial effects of a major fire that occurred on the North Slope of Alaska in July-September 2007, and to begin documenting recovery of the landscape including terrestrial and aquatic components. SGER funding would allow a survey and sampling program to begin in April or early May 2008 and to continue through the following summer. Products of the research would include a unique data set on distribution, intensity, and patchiness of the burn, with documentation of initial impacts on surface carbon, water, and energy balance, element cycles and terrestrial and aquatic communities. The research would also serve as a field test of equipment packages and data protocols currently under development for use in the National Environmental Observatory Network (NEON). Broader impacts include (1) the interpretation of these fire-related changes in the context of global climate change in the Arctic region, and (2) the ability to use this major, large-area disturbance to develop and test landscape-level models heretofore based only on finer-scale experimental and comparative studies of individual arctic ecosystems. Much of the sampling work will include graduate and REU students working at Toolik Lake, as well as science journalists participating in a unique MBL science journalism program.