Protocol implementation plan for monitoring weather and climate in the Arctic Network

Sousanes, Pamela; Hill, Ken; Johnson, William; Miller, Scott

Climate is widely recognized as one of the most fundamental drivers of ecological condition. The physical characteristics of a region provide a foundation that defines fundamental parameters of that ecosystem. Changes in the physical environment, caused either by climate change or normal physical processes, can have significant impacts on the entire ecosystem. For these reasons climate has been selected as a high priority vital sign for the Arctic Network (ARCN). The network includes Arctic coastal parks including Bering Land Bridge National Preserve and Cape Krusenstern National Monument, and three interior Arctic parks including Noatak National Preserve, Kobuk Valley National Park, and Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve. The main objectives are to monitor and record weather conditions at representative locations in the Arctic parks in order to identify long and short-term trends, provide reliable climate data to park managers, park scientists, and other researchers, and to participate in larger scale climate monitoring and modeling efforts. This plan outlines the means by which monitoring data will be collected, managed, and reported for the Weather and Climate Vital Sign as described in the approved ARCN monitoring plan (Lawler et al. 2009). The ARCN will implement the peer-reviewed and approved protocol in use by the Central Alaska Network (CAKN) in its entirety (Sousanes 2006), including the Standard Operating Procedure updates 2017 (Sousanes et al. 2017; links to individual SOPs in Table 4). Implementation of the CAKN climate protocol in ARCN parks will occur with the following modifications: 1. There are seventeen ARCN weather stations currently installed that will be maintained and managed by ARCN staff in the five park units. This brings the total number of stations managed by the CAKN and ARCN weather and climate monitoring programs to 30. The seventeen ARCN weather stations are referred to as ARCN Remote Automated Weather Stations (RAWS). 2. Currently one snow telemetry (SNOTEL) site is managed in ARCN under a cooperative agreement with the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). Maintenance, data collection, processing, dissemination, and archiving will be done by NRCS. NPS will provide access to the site and annual funds for operating the site. The NPS and NRCS agree to maintain the interagency agreement into the foreseeable future. 3. There are weather and climate stations in and around ARCN that are operated by other state and federal agencies that complement the ARCN weather stations. When feasible, ARCN will coordinate with other agencies to assure that the data from these sites are maintained. An example of this type of coordination would be assisting with annual maintenance of National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) remote automated weather stations (RAWS) that are located inside ARCN park boundaries. The ARCN parks are remote and access is a challenge, so coordination is critical. 4. Timing of the annual site visits will be timed so as not to interfere with subsistence hunting on park lands. Coordination with cultural resource staff will occur prior to each field season to determine the optimal timing. These protocols along with foundation documents drafted by the Western Regional Climate Center (Davey 2007) were used to design and develop a strategy that focuses on high latitude climate issues and remote station operations. The success of these efforts is dependent on the efforts of various agencies and institutions that contribute to the holistic view of climate in northwest Alaska.

Protocol implementation plan for monitoring weather and climate in the Arctic Network

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