GRS Completes ("Survives") 2019 BLM Forest Inventory Field Season in BLM Dalton Highway Management Corridor
Geographic Resource Solutions completed their fourth BLM Alaska Forest Inventory field season on July 13th in the northern portion of the BLM Dalton Highway Management Corridor. Field sampling occurred during a four-week period, beginning from Fairbanks on June 17th and ending back in Fairbanks late Saturday, July 13th; during this time the field staff endured not only the very difficult and primitive conditions of the vegetation (2 and 1/2 foot high tussocks) and terrain (over 70 percent slopes) , but also the abnormally high summer temperatures that reached into the mid-80's and smoke carried north from the Hess Creek Fire near Livengood. GRS staff sampled 86 field sites while traveling approximately 200 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 Atigun Pass (MP 244); most field sampling efforts took place north of the Arctic Circle from the Arctic Circle Campground (MP 115) north to the vicinity of the "Last Tree" near MP 235. Sample sites were planned in plant communities 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 are believed to represent the different forestland stands in BLM's Dalton Highway corridor properties. An opportunistic sampling approach was also be used when field crews observed unique vegetation types in the field that are large enough to sample but which did not occur as sample stands identified 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 represented 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 description data were collected at each field site. The resulting sample area field summary data will yield species-specific estimates of canopy cover, quadratic mean diameter, trees/acre, average height, cubic volume/acre, and biomass (dry tons)/acre.
During this effort GRS staff worked six days a week out of camps set up at the Yukon River Crossing Campground, the Marion Creek Campground north of Coldfoot, the Arctic Circle Campground and undeveloped camp site located along the Deitrich River north of Wiseman, AK near MP 222.
GRS staff from their Arcata, CA office that participated in this effort are Chris Stumpf, Sage Romberg, and Ken Stumpf. Charlie Gusty of Stony River, AK again worked with GRS as a Field Guide and was instrumental to the success of this field sampling effort. BLM Alaska provided staff that also participated in GRS's field data collection efforts, as they provided Soil Scientists Mark Much, Ron McCormick (2 weeks), and Marissa Theve (2 weeks) and Field Data Technicians, Andrew Davies and Summer Nay.
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.
