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U.S. Department of the Interior
Ice wedges are a common feature of permafrost regions that form when cracks in frozen ground are filled by ice. Because they are located near the ground surface and have little covering insulation, they are susceptible to thaw and can be an early warning sign of permafrost loss. Ice wedges are also responsible for much of the unique polygonal patterned ground in the Arctic.
National Park Service (NPS) scientists had been monitoring water quality in a small lake in Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve since 2005 when they noticed a sudden and persistent increase in the ionic concentration in 2019. The specific conductance of the lake water increased over time.
In large river ecosystems the timing, extent, duration, and frequency of floodplain inundation greatly affect the quality of fish and wildlife habitat and the supply of important ecosystem goods and services. Seasonal high flows provide connectivity from the river to the floodplain, and seasonal inundation of the floodplain governs ecosystem structure and function.
National Wildlife Refuges (NWR) in Texas and Oklahoma manage forested habitats to support priority bird populations in the West Gulf Coastal Plain and Ouachitas Bird Conservation Regions. Airborne laser altimetry, or light detection and ranging (lidar), captures detail on vertical and horizonal forest structure helpful for determining bird species diversity, density, and distribution.
Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service deployed very-high resolution (VHR), multi-camera sensor arrays on fixed-winged aircraft to develop digital aerial imagery surveys in support of the Atlantic Marine Assessment Program for Protected Species (AMAPPS). In 2021, AMAPPS collected over 1.8 million images from aerial surveys over the Atlantic Ocean Outer Continental Shelf, which includes data from migratory, summer, and winter seasons.
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) National Operations Center (NOC) and the Medford District Office (MDO) are using multi-scale, multi-temporal remotely sensed imagery to monitor forest cover and condition in BLM-administered lands in southwestern Oregon. The NOC employed cloud-computing architecture to efficiently derive a suite of Sentinel-2 10-meter resolution satellite image mosaic products spanning the entire MDO.
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) National Operations Center (NOC), through a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Science grant, partnered with researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey and University of California–Los Angeles to create an online mapping application called LandCART: Landscape Cover Analysis and Reporting Tools. LandCART V1.0 was released on February 16, 2022.
The Yukon River basin encompasses 832,000 square-kilometers and is one of Earth's largest boreal-Arctic rivers. Characterized by a long, frozen winter season, the river demonstrates an abrupt ice breakup and spring snowmelt-driven flood pulse.
The potential for large changes in the amount and distribution of surface water in arctic landscapes is high given climate-induced changes in permafrost. Because changes in surface water have broadscale implications in the structure and function of ecosystems, understanding and tracking surface water change is a high priority for some Alaskan refuges.
Wetlands make up less than 1% of West Virginia’s land surface but are critical habitat for nearly one-fourth of its species, including 44% of its rare plant species. They also provide other benefits, including improved water quality as well as flood and erosion control.
