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Watching the Seasons Change in Alaska's Parks with Phenocams

A researcher setting up a climate monitoring station in the mountains

A climate monitoring station in the Brooks Range, Noatak National Preserve, Alaska. Image from the National Park Service's page.

Remote cameras mounted on climate monitoring stations, called phenocams, reveal a great deal about the seasons. Their photographs show when the first snow falls, when snow settles in for the winter, when it melts, when plants green up and when they fade in autumn, and even the timing of unusual weather. Over years, the record can show whether, and how, the timing of these seasonal events is changing.

A year in a minute or two

The National Park Service has turned a full year of each camera's photographs into short time-lapse videos from stations across Alaska's parks:

StationPark
Serpentine Hot SpringsBering Land Bridge National Preserve
Mount NoakCape Krusenstern National Monument
PamichtukGates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve
Salmon RiverKobuk Valley National Park
KugururokNoatak National Preserve
Gates GlacierWrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve
Upper Charley RiverYukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve

The Gates Glacier video, from eastern Alaska, uses selected photographs from days with good weather in 2016.

Why the Park Service watches

In another video, Park Service ecologist David Swanson explains how the Arctic Network Inventory and Monitoring team uses the cameras to study seasonal change across Alaska's northernmost parks: Bering Land Bridge, Cape Krusenstern, Gates of the Arctic, Kobuk Valley and Noatak. Each camera is part of a climate station that also records the weather. Together, the stations let the team pick out long- and short-term trends, provide reliable climate data to other researchers and contribute to climate monitoring and modeling beyond the parks' boundaries.

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