Location
The Caribou-Poker Creeks Research Watershed (CPCRW) is a 104 km2 basin near Chatanika, Alaska reserved for ecological, hydrological, and climatic research. It is owned jointly by the State of Alaska and the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
LTER — Bonanza Creek
Research Topics:
Successional processes associated with wildfire and floodplains; facilitative and competitive interactions among plant species throughout succession; plant-mediated changes in resource and energy availability for decomposers; herbivorous control of plant species composition; hydrologic regime and stream ecology.
Description:
The Bonanza Creek Long Term Ecological Research program is located in the boreal forest of interior Alaska, USA. Our facilities are centered in the city of Fairbanks. Research at our LTER site focuses on improving our understanding of the long-term consequences of changing climate and disturbance regimes in the Alaskan boreal forest. Our overall objective is to document the major controls over forest dynamics, biogeochemistry, and disturbance and their interactions in the face of a changing climate. The site was established in Fairbanks, Alaska in 1987 as part of the National Science Foundation's Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) Program Read More
History:
The BNZ LTER program was established to study patterns and mechanisms of boreal forest succession following fluvial and fire disturbance, and for the first few decades, our monitoring program, long-term experiments and process studies focused on state factor and interactive controls over succession, trophic dynamics and ecosystem function of floodplain and upland chronosequences.
NEON — Caribou Creek - Poker Flats Watershed
Located 30 miles northeast of Fairbanks, this site is within the-managed Experimental Research Forest. The site is located within rolling boreal forest. There is no field housing provided at this site; all work is conducted via day trips from Fairbanks. Mosquitoes are abundant between June and early August and constitute the main challenge to working at Caribou Creek. Weather can also be unpredictable; precipitation in the form of rain or snow can occur any time of year, and average summer temperatures can vary from the 30s to mid-70s.
NEON Data (Core Terrestrial) from this site.