2016 BioBlitz Species Records

Baltensperger, Andy

As part of the National Park Service’s (NPS) centennial celebration during 2016, Gates of the Arctic National Park and Bering Land Bridge National Preserve participated in a National Geographic and NPS sponsored BioBlitz effort in Anaktuvuk Pass, AK. A BioBlitz is a short-term event where National Park Service staff, professional scientists, students, and citizen scientists work together to find and identify as many different species within a park as possible during a short period of time. This event provided opportunities for the discovery of understudied biota in national parks and sharing of these opportunities through scientific research, grants, and environmental education. Over 110 National Parks across the country participated in the centennial BioBlitz, including four parks in Alaska (Gates of the Arctic, Bering Land Bridge, Denali, and Klondike Gold Rush). The Gates of the Arctic event had the distinction of serving as the Arctic Regional Showcase Bioblitz, and will receive special attention in Washington, D.C. for contributing its unique collection of Arctic faunal diversity to the national species inventory. Scientists from the NPS and the University of Alaska Fairbanks coordinated with the Simon Paneak Memorial Museum to lead Nunamiut School students as they identified and learned about a wide range of taxa in the Anaktuvuk Pass area within Gates of the Arctic National Park. Investigations included camera trap, track and scat surveys to detect large mammals such as ungulates and carnivores, a live-trapping effort to capture small mammals such as rodents and shrews, point counts to detect birds, lake and stream surveys in search of fish and frogs, sampling to detect both aquatic and terrestrial invertebrates, and DNA barcoding to identify soil microbes. Participants will also learned traditional Inupiaq names, trapping techniques, and uses for many taxa from local subsistence experts. Photos, locations and identities of plant and vertebrate taxa detected during this three-day event were uploaded via the iNaturalist app and automatically added to the National BioBlitz species list. These georeferenced records are also archived in the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) where they will contribute to a growing international database of faunal records that are freely available for download and use in subsequent research.