Abstracts
SEARCH Open Science Meeting
October 27, 2003
Seattle, Washington, USA
Photography-based Measurements of the Expansion of Shrubs in Northern Alaska
Kenneth D. Tape1, Charles Racine2, Matthew Sturm3
1UAF, Geophysical Institute, P.O. Box 80425, Fairbanks, AK, 99708, USA, Phone 907-353-5171, Fax 907-353-5142, fnkdt@uaf.edu
2CRREL, 72 Lyme Road, Hanover, NH, 03755, USA, Phone 603-646-4100, Fax 603-646-4785, cracine@crrel.usace.army
3CRREL-AK, P.O. Box 35170, Ft. Wainwright, AK, 99703-0170, USA, Phone 907-353-5183, Fax 907-353-5142, msturm@crrel.usace.army.mil
In the late 1940s, several thousand low-altitude oblique aerial photographs were taken covering the North Slope Uplands and Brooks Range regions of Alaska. Over the last 4 summers, 270 of the old photos have been repeated from helicopter. The area visible in the repeated photographs covers over 2000 km2, including sections of 18 major drainages and areas of open tundra. With few exceptions, photos in which there were shrubs present in the 1940s show an increase in shrub size, patch density, and areal extent in the past 50 years. A grid system overlay has been used to analyze 150 of the photo pairs quantitatively. This analysis indicates an increase of 20 (provisional) km2 in the areal coverage of shrubs. The photo analysis also shows that while alder is the most phtographically conspicuous shrub contributing to the expansion, willow and birch are also involved. We are currently using data from aboveground shrub biomass harvests to translate the change in areal coverage of shrubs represented by the expansion into an increase in aboveground shrub biomass.
Abstract Categories: Changes on Land, Student Poster
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