Written by: Laura PrughMy new postdoc Madelon van de Kerk and I had an amazing field trip in Wrangell St Elias National Park Sept 16-22. We were deploying remote cameras and snow stakes to monitor snow conditions as part of my NASA ABoVE Dall sheep project. A major goal of the study is to determine how snow conditions affect Dall sheep movement and survival rates, and we put up 22 snow monitoring stations in an area of the park where our agency collaborators will be putting GPS collars on sheep later this fall. Each monitoring station consists of a camera mounted on a t-post that will take a photo of a snow stake every hour all winter. Our ground-based snow monitoring will be used to improve a model of snow conditions based on satellite remote sensing and meteorological data. Combining this model with the GPS location data from collared sheep will allow us to determine, for the first time, how snow conditions like depth and hardness affect Dall sheep movements. For the fieldwork, we were joined by my co-PI at Oregon State University, Anne Nolin, and her PhD student, Chris Cosgrove. The 4 of us were flown to a small cabin in the Wrangells in a small plane (a Piper Supercub), well above treeline on a large, alpine mesa. We then set up the snow monitoring stations along elevational transects, which was extremely challenging due to steep and rocky terrain. Our packs were also quite heavy and awkward, weighing >40 lbs, because we had to pack around the steel t-posts, PVC snow stakes, cameras, and 2 16-lb post drivers. We all had pretty sore muscles, but it was worth it! The scenery was breathtaking, weather was great, and we saw lots of sheep, pikas, ptarmigan, and some arctic ground squirrels. More pictures of the trip are posted on the 'pictures' page!
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