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West Dock 1km

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General Information

Created: 2013-11-22 08:35:40
Modified: 2014-02-03 14:37:26

Active: Yes
Country:United States
Site:West Dock
CALM-Code:U5
Responsible Countries: United States,
Timezone:UTC/GMT -09:00 hours
Vegetation Type:Tundra
Responsible Person:Nikolay Shiklomanov
Type:Grid
Nodes:121
Rows:11
Columns:11
Offset:100 m

 

DESCRIPTION OF AREA CONTAINING SITE:

West Dock grid is located on the outer Arctic Coastal Plain within the Prudhoe Bay oil field. Contrasts between polygonized ‘‘uplands’’ and drained thaw-lake basins constitute the primary relief at these sites, and lakes and ponds are ubiquitous elements of the landscape. Landcover units include moist nonacidic tundra and wet tundra vegetation, and Typic Aquorthel soils developed in alluvium [Walker and Bockheim, 1995]. Two drained thaw-lake basins occupy the eastern half of the grid and are separated from the upland to the west by a prominent beach ridge. A network of low-centered icewedge polygons is developed on the ponded tundra upland (Hinkel & Nelson, 2003).

 

SAMPLING DESIGN AND METHOD:

1-sq km grid consists of a square array of surveyed permanent stakes separated by 100 m, yielding an 11 × 11 array of sampling nodes on each grid. Thaw depth and snow sampling was conducted twice by manual probing at each stake. The two values for each sampling point are averaged, yielding a maximum of 121 data points per grid per probing date. The active layer was not measured at locations where grid points intersect rocks or deep water.

Two soil climate station was established in August of 2001 in two representative landscapes within the CALM grid. The “U5(west dock) Low” station represents drained lake basin. The “U5(west dock) High” station represents poligonized uplands.  The elevation for U5low is about 1.5 m (5 ft). The elevation for U5high is about 3 m (10 ft).  Each station monitors air temperature, solar and net radiation, wind speed and direction, and soil temperature at various depths to a maximum of 120 cm. Measurements are made at 20-minute intervals and averaged and recorded every hour.

 

DATA

Climate, Soil temperature and soil moisture metadata and data are also available at http://soils.usda.gov/survey/scan/alaska/WestdockLow/ and http://soils.usda.gov/survey/scan/alaska/WestdockHigh/

Additional Climate data are also available at http://www.uaf.edu/water/projects/NorthSlope/coastal_plain/west_dock/west_dock.html

Aspect:295.8
Permafrost Zone:Continuous
Vegetation:Graminoid-moss tundra (wet nonacidic)
Landform:Outer coastal plain, drained lake basins
Lithology:Organic Layer thikness:15 (cm); mineral texture -- silty loam /silt/peatty muck Terric Hemistel
Description:General description of soil moisture : Very wet to saturated (Vol MC 50-90 %)
Access Timeseries
Bibliographic References
Nelson F.E., Shiklomanov, N.I., Mueller G.R., Hinkel K.M., Walker D.A., and J.G. Bockheim.1997 Estimating active-layer thickness over a large region: Kuparuk River basin, Alaska, USA. Arctic and Alpine Research, 29(4): 167-378.
http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1551985
Klene A.E., Nelson F.E., Shiklomanov N.I., and K.M. Hinkel. 2001 The n-factor in natural landscapes: Variability of air and soil-surface temperatures, Kuparuk River basin, Alaska. Arctic, Antarctic and Alpine Research, 33(2): 140-148.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15230430.2001.12003416
Nelson, F.E., Shiklomanov, N.I., and G.R. Mueller. Variability of active-layer thickness at multiple spatial scales, north-central Alaska, USA. 1999 Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research, 31(2): 179-186.
http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1552606
Shiklomanov, N.I. and F.E. Nelson. Analytic representation of the active layer thickness field, Kuparuk River basin, Alaska. 1999 Ecological Modelling, 123: 105-125.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s0304-3800(99)00127-1
Bockheim, J.G., Walker, D.A., Everett, L.R., Nelson, F.E. and N.I. Shiklomanov. 1998 . Soils and cryoturbation in moist nonacidic and acidic tundra in the Kuparuk River basin, Arctic Alaska, USA. Arctic and Alpine Research, 30(2): 166-174.
http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1552131
Nelson, F.E., Hinkel, K.M., Shiklomanov, N.I., Mueller, G.R., Miller, L.L., and D.A. Walker. Active-layer thickness in north central Alaska: systematic sampling, scale, and spatial autocorrelation. 1998 Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres, 103(D22): 28963-28973.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/98jd00534
Nelson, F.E., Outcalt, S.I., Brown, J., Shiklomanov, N.I., and K.M. Hinkel. Spatial and temporal attributes of the active-layer thickness record, Barrow, Alaska, USA, 1998 Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Permafrost. Centre de etudes nordiques de l'Universite Laval, Laval, Quebec, Canada, Yellowknife, NWT, Canada, pp. 797-802
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ppp.3430010210
Walker, D.A., Auerbach, N.A., Bockheim, J.G., Chapin, F.S., Eugster, W., King, J.Y., McFadden, J.P., Michaelson, G.J., Nelson, F.E., Oechel, W.C., Ping, C.L., Reeburg, W.S., Regli, S., Shiklomanov, N.I., and G.L. Vourlitis.1998 Energy and trace-gas fluxes across a soil pH boundary in the arctic. Nature, 394(6692): 469-472.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/28839
Klene A.E., Nelson F.E., and N.I. Shiklomanov. 2001 The n-factor as a tool in geocryological mapping: seasonal thaw in the Kuparuk River Basin, Alaska. Physical Geography, 22(6): 449-466.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02723646.2001.10642754
Walker, D. A., and J. G. Bockheim, Site selection for the portable flux towers, ARCSS/LAII/Flux Study, 1316 June 1995, Summary of field activities, Land-Atmos.-Ice Interact. Sci. Manage. Off., Geophys. Inst.,Univ. of Alaska-Fairbanks, 1995.
http://dx.doi.org/10.2172/290848
Hinkel, K.M. Nelson, F.E. 2003. Spatial and temporal patterns of active layer thickness at Circumpolar Active Layer Monitoring (CALM) sites in northern Alaska, 1995-2000. Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol.108, No. D2, 8168.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2001jd000927
Shiklomanov, N.I. and F.E. Nelson. 2003 Climatic variability in the Kuparuk region, north-central Alaska: optimizating spatial and temporal interpolation in a sparse observation network. Arctic, 56: 136-146.
http://dx.doi.org/10.14430/arctic609
Shiklomanov, N.I. and F.E. Nelson. 2003 Statistical representation of landscape-specific active-layer variability. In Phillips, M., Springman, S. M., and Arenson, L. U. (eds.), Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Permafrost, vol. 2. Lisse: A.A. Balkema, 1039-1044.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/b978-0-444-53643-3.00095-9
Walker D.A., Jia G.J., Epstein H.E., Raynolds M.K., Chapin III F.S., Copass C., Hinzman L.D., Kane D., Knudson J.A., Maier H., Michaelson G.J., Nelson F.E., Ping C.L., Shiklomanov N.I., Romanovsky V.E., Shur Y. 2003 Vegetation-soil-thaw-depth relationships along a Low Arctic bioclimatic gradient, Alaska: Synthesis of information from the Atlas studies. Permafrost and Periglacial Processes, 14: 103-123.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ppp.452
Shiklomanov N. I. and F. E. Nelson, F. E., 2002. Active-layer mapping at regional scales: a 13-year spatial time series for the Kuparuk region, north-central Alaska. Permafrost and Periglacial Processes, 13: 219-230.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ppp.425

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U5 West DockU5 West Dock 2U5 West Dock 3
Map

Longitude:-148.564962 °
Latitude:70.367769 °
Elevation:7.999477 m
EPSG:4326
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