Denali National Park and Preserve
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National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior Denali National Park and Preserve Denali National Park and Preserve Center for Resources, Science, and Learning NPS Photo by Lucy Tyrrell Summary of Current Resource Projects 2005 Table of Contents Natural Resources ............................................................................................................... 3 Integrated Programs .............................................................................................................. 3 Central Alaska Network (CAKN) and Inventory and Monitoring at Denali........ 3 Proactive Approach to Protecting the Toklat Basin.................................................. 5 Plants........................................................................................................................................ 6 Off-Road Vehicle (ORV) Impacts................................................................................ 6 Long-term Monitoring.................................................................................................. 6 Removal of Exotic (Non-native) Plants ...................................................................... 8 Revegetation of Construction/Disturbed Sites.......................................................... 8 Revegetation .................................................................................................................... 9 Monitoring Dust Palliatives on the Park Road .......................................................... 9 Wildland Fire ........................................................................................................................ 10 Monitoring Wildland Fires......................................................................................... 10 Creating Defensible Space Around Structures ........................................................ 10 Utilizing Satellite Imagery to Estimate Burn Severity.............................................. 11 Videography Landcover Reclassification and Moose Browse Utilization .......... 12 Fire Education .............................................................................................................. 13 Wildlife................................................................................................................................... 14 Keep Wildlife Wild....................................................................................................... 14 Bears ............................................................................................................................... 14 Bear Management ........................................................................................................ 15 Aerial Moose Survey .................................................................................................... 17 Road Wildlife Study ..................................................................................................... 18 Wolves............................................................................................................................ 19 Small Mammal Inventory............................................................................................ 20 Small Mammal Monitoring......................................................................................... 21 Birds................................................................................................................................ 22 Wood Frog Surveys...................................................................................................... 28 Freshwater Fish Inventory.......................................................................................... 29 Physical Resources ............................................................................................................ 30 Soils Mapping ............................................................................................................... 30 Toklat Basin Surficial Geology ................................................................................... 30 Permafrost Monitoring................................................................................................ 31 Weather Monitoring at Park Headquarters ............................................................. 31 Parkwide Climate Monitoring.................................................................................... 34 Weather Station on Mt. McKinley............................................................................. 35 UV-B Monitoring......................................................................................................... 36 Air Quality Monitoring................................................................................................ 37 Regional Assessment of Toxic Airborne Contaminants......................................... 37 Water Resource Management Plan Development .................................................. 39 Seismic Monitoring...................................................................................................... 40 Denali Resource Projects Update 2005 Monitoring Landslide at Mile Post 45....................................................................... 40 Paleontological Survey of the Lower Cantwell Formation.................................... 42 McKinley Quad Mapping ........................................................................................... 42 Field Class for Geologic Mapping ............................................................................. 42 Snow Surveys ................................................................................................................ 43 Snowmobile-related Research Projects .................................................................... 44 Muldrow Glacier Monitoring .................................................................................... 44 Long-term Glacier Monitoring .................................................................................. 45 Historic Photos of Glaciers......................................................................................... 45 Soundscape Inventory and Monitoring Program.................................................... 46 Mining Issues (Minerals Management) .................................................................... 48 Reclamation of Disturbed Areas ................................................................................ 48 Social Sciences ................................................................................................................... 49 Visitor-related Projects................................................................................................ 49 Winter Road Users and their Perceptions of the Aufeis Removal Project .......... 50 Cultural and Subsistence .................................................................................................. 52 Updates of Subsistence Community Use Profiles ................................................... 52 Kantishna River Fall Chum Salmon Stock Assessment .......................................... 52 Subsistence Reports to be Reprinted......................................................................... 53 Traditional Subsistence Access Review for the Cantwell Area ............................. 53 Denali’s Historic Resources and National Register ................................................ 54 Historical Research and Oral History ....................................................................... 54 Archeology .................................................................................................................... 55 Research Support .............................................................................................................. 55 Geographic Information System................................................................................ 55 Denali National Park and Preserve Museum ........................................................... 56 Research Administration............................................................................................. 57 2 Denali Resource Projects Update 2005 Natural Resources Integrated Programs Central Alaska Network (CAKN) and Inventory and Monitoring at Denali In 1991, Denali National Park and Preserve was selected to serve as a prototype (one of 10 in the National Park System) to develop a Long-term Ecological Monitoring (LTEM) program. At Denali, the LTEM program’s function was to help park managers protect park resources by providing the ecological context for resource preservation decisions. As a result of the prototype monitoring program, the National Park Service recognized the value of monitoring data and the need broaden the monitoring program to a national level. In 2000, the National Park Service created the “Vital Signs” monitoring program which grouped 270 park units into 32 ‘networks’. In this program, a “vital sign” is an indicator of the health of park ecosystems. Each network would develop an ecological monitoring program for its group of parks. Denali is one of three parks in the Central Alaska Network (CAKN), which also includes Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve and Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve. 3 Denali Resource Projects Update 2005 From 1991 to 2000, the LTEM program focused on an intensive watershed sampling design in Rock Creek, in the eastern end of the park, but this approach did not allow park managers to infer information across all of Denali’s