Video
A Year at the Salmon River Climate Monitoring Station, Kobuk Valley National Park
Transcript
This video shows seasonal changes in Kobuk Valley National Park, Alaska using time-lapse photography from the year 2018. After zooming across a satellite image of North America to northwestern Alaska, we arrive at the Park, outlined in yellow. The location of the Salmon River climate monitoring station is marked by a red dot. A remote automated camera is mounted on a tripod, along with weather instruments. The time-lapse video was made from selected photos taken on days with good weather. The view looks across a landscape with scattered spruce trees, looking uphill toward a rocky promontory. The year begins with a snow-covered landscape. It is twilight at mid-day in January, because our location is north of the Arctic Circle. The fence post near the camera has a pole attached, to measure the snow depth; the pole is 6 feet tall with black and white sections that are 6 inches long. The sun gets brighter in February, March, and April, and the snow depth fluctuates as new snow falls and then gets scoured away by the wind. The snow melts away in May and June, revealing a low mat of sparse vegetation near the camera, and a line of tall willow and alder shrubs in front of a rocky ledge. Green leaves form on the tall shrubs during June and July. In August and September the leaf colors change, first to orange and red in the vegetation mat near the camera and on the mountain slope beyond, then yellow in the tall willows, while the alders stay green. By late September the alder leaves have turned brown and fallen off. The snow arrives in October and accumulates to be about two-and-a-half feet deep, and the mid-day sun fades to twilight again in December.
Description
This video was made from a full year of photographs from a remote camera (phenocam) located at the Salmon River climate monitoring station in Kobuk Valley National Park.
Duration
1 minute, 54 seconds
Credit
NPS/David Swanson
Date Created
05/26/2023
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