GRS Completes 2018 BLM Forest Inventory Field Season in BLM Dalton Highway Management Corridor
Geographic Resource Solutions completed their third BLM Alaska Forest Inventory field season this past summer in the southern portion of the BLM Dalton Highway Management Corridor. Field sampling occurred during a three-week period, beginning from Fairbanks on July 30th and ending back in Fairbanks late Saturday, August 18th; during this time the field staff worked in very difficult and primitive conditions to sample 74 field sites while traveling approximately 140 miles along the Dalton Highway ("Ice Road") starting approximately 20 miles south of the Yukon River Crossing and then continuing north along the Dalton Highway to the vicinity of Marion Creek (MP 180); some field sampling efforts took place north of the Arctic Circle from Arctic Circle Campground (MP115) north to the vicinity of Marion Creek. Sample sites were planned in stands selected based on the stratification of two scenes of Landsat 8 imagery from 2016. The sample stands were selected on the basis of image stratification results that identified the largest homogeneous areas of the different spectrally determined strata that were believed to represent the different forestland stands in BLM's Dalton Highway corridor properties. An opportunistic sampling approach was also be used to sample 2 additional sites when field crews observed unique vegetation types in the field that were large enough to sample but which did not occur as sample stands in the stratification data set. All sample sites were accessed from points traveled to by truck along the Dalton Highway or The Alyeska Pipeline Access Road and its main spur roads and then by cross-country hiking to each targeted sample area.
GRS staff implemented the line-point transect sampling methodology to develop the species/landscape feature-specific canopy cover estimates; in recent projects GRS has adapted this methodology to also develop forest inventory estimates that include species-specific estimates of trees/acres, height, cubic volume, and biomass (dry tons/acre). All trees, shrubs, herbaceous and non-vascular plants were observed and recorded, as well as landscape features that represent abiotic site features related to the sampled plant communities. Brown's transects were also integrated in this sampling approach to estimate counts of both coarse woody debris by decay class and fine woody debris by fuel class. Soil pits were dug and soil survey information and data was collected at each field site. The resulting sample area summary data yield species-specific estimates of canopy cover, quadratic mean diameter, trees/acre, average heighth, cubic volume/acre, and biomass (dry tons)/acre.
During this effort GRS staff worked out of camps set up at the Yukon River Crossing Campground, the Marion Creek Campground north of Coldfoot, and the Arctic Circle Campground.
GRS staff from their Arcata, CA office that participated in this effort are Chris Stumpf(L3), Sage Romberg(L7), Ken Stumpf(L6), Mia Bradshaw(L), and Mike Burek(L2). Charlie Gusty(L4) of Stony River, AK worked with GRS as a Field Guide and was instrumental to the success of this field sampling effort. Brad Casar(L8) of the Homer Soil Conservation Service and Suki Wilder(L5) of BLM Alaska also participated in GRS's field data collection efforts.
These field data will form a foundation of ground-truth used to develop detailed quantitative natural resource inventory map data sets using GRS's Discrete Classification image processing methodology. Data will eventually be exported to EcoSurvey formats and delivered to BLM Alaska as both EcoSurvey database tables and ArcGIS coverages.
