Alaska Duff Moisture Station Data
Data and site descriptions from the 2003-2007 duff moisture stations in Alaska.
These remote automated weather stations include May Creek (Wrangell-St Elias NP), Campbell Tract (near Anchorage), Slykok Lake (near Soldatna on the Kenai Peninsula), and Mystery Creek (approx 20 miles west of Soldatna in the foothills of the Kenai Range).
Flammability/Fuel Moisture Fire Weather Stations
Links to Specific Alaska Fuel Moisture Station Summaries and Data
- May Creek, Alaska Station Summary
Data spreadsheet (Excel) - Mystery Creek, AK Station Summary
Data spreadsheet (Excel)
AirFire Fuel Moisture Station Summary—
In order to help fire managers track recent trends in duff and fuel moisture as well as past and current weather parameters (e.g., air temperature, relative humidity, winds etc), AirFire has installed and managed a variety of remote fuel moisture stations over the past 5-10 years. These stations have been deployed to assist with prescription burn decisions in locations from Florida to Alaska and Oregon to North Carolina, with sensors measuring and outputting hourly weather data as well as fuel and soil moisture and temperatures. While such stations have been a mix of manually downloaded and automatically retrieved information, data from the remote stations which have remote access capabilities (e.g., via phone, cel phone or radio links) were made available real-time or near real-time (updates once daily) on the PWFSL/AirFire web site. Three such stations were recently active in the field through early 2007: Slikok Lake and Mystery Creek in Alaska and Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. However, due to no cel-phone access, Mystery Creek data was available during the summer when manual downloads were transmitted to the AirFire Team for inclusion on the web site.
Users and cooperators of such stations have included the National Park Service (Wrangell-St Elias National Park in Alaska with the May Creek Weather Station), the Bureau of Land Management (Campbell Tract near Anchorage, AK), Fish and Wildlife Service (Mystery Creek and Slykok Lake in AK, and Alligator River Wildlife Refuge in NC), US Air Force (Eglin Air Force Base in FL), and the Forest Service (Baker City Watershed in OR). Data from moisture and temperature sensors installed at varying depths in the upper and lower duff layers—both within the upper layer of live moss and the lower layer of dead moss) have proved to be of particular interest to cooperators and fire managers, especially as to tracking overall trends in the temperature and moisture parameters in anticipation of potential burn windows. Such sensor data have also helped the NPS to track melt and transition of the permafrost layer (Alaska stations), and for helping understand how the permafrost layer melts out in the spring as it responds to past and present weather conditions (e.g., past winter, snowdepth, melt out, etc). A recent example of such information is shown below for the Slykok station tracking weather and soil/fuel moisture data from late March through mid-April 2007. In this example, soil moisture sensors A and C are situated within one study plot while B and D are located within an adjacent plot.
This plot from the hourly data measured at the Slykok Lake, AK duff moisture station illustrates the transition from a cold and wet, permafrost dominated forest floor regime to a warmer and drier regime susceptible to wildfire. Please download Excel spreadsheet data for any of the stations to help visualize and track these seasonal transitions in the moisture and temperature
regime for these sites in Alaska.
Although stations are normally relatively robust, bear and other animal damage has occurred to both sensors and infrastructure. In one instance, a bear (or perhaps moose) repeatedly tipped over associated deep cell RV batteries, and many of the wires experienced considerable chew damage.
