Climate station maintenance in the Central Alaska Inventory and Monitoring Network: 2017 summary
Hill K and Sousanes PJ. 2020. Climate station maintenance in the Central Alaska Inventory and Monitoring Network: 2017 summary. Natural Resource Data Series. NPS/CAKN/NRDS—2020/1261. National Park Service. Fort Collins, Colorado
The mission of the Central Alaska Network Inventory and Monitoring Program (CAKN) is to collect, compile and synthesize scientific information about the central network of parks in order to manage park resources "unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations". The Inventory and Monitoring (I&M) Program is a major component of the National Park Service’s (NPS) strategy to improve park management through greater reliance on scientific information. The objective of the climate monitoring program is to monitor and record weather conditions at representative locations in order to identify long and short-term trends, provide reliable climate data to other researchers, and to participate in larger scale climate monitoring and modeling efforts beyond park boundaries. Thirteen remote automated I&M weather stations (RAWS) have been installed in CAKN parks since 2003. There are additional weather and climate stations in the parks run by state and federal agencies with specific objectives and missions. It is in the best interest of the CAKN program to cooperate with these other entities on maintenance site visits. During the 2016 field season maintenance site visits were conducted at a total of twenty-two sites, including thirteen CAKN RAWS, four SNOTEL (snow telemetry) stations in coordination with Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) staff, and five fire RAWS stations. This report summarizes all work for the 2017 field season and includes current sensor metadata. These annual operations reports are compiled each year along with other discreet deliverables so that it is clear how the data were collected. For more information, including data access, weather summaries, and annual reports please visit the CAKN climate website at http://science.nature.nps.gov/im/units/cakn/vitalsign.cfm?vsid=36.
- Type
- Published Report
- Authors
- Hill, Ken; Sousanes, Pamela
- Date of Issue
- 2020-02
- Publisher
- National Park Service
- Units
- CAKN , NRSS