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Currently, there are two different projects deployed in the vicinity of NESS that are represented on this site: the RAISE project and AON's Pleistocene Park tower. AON will be deploying a Snow Station late in the spring of 2009.
RAISE
Established in 1995, the Russian-American Initiative on Shelf-Land Interactions in an Arctic environment (RAISE) to facilitate collaborative research between Russian and American scientists in order to understand processes and events in terrestrial, shelf, and ocean environments in northern Eurasia in the context of a globally changing environment. RAISE was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the Russian Foundation for Basic Research over a 10-year period as a mechanism to improve U.S. - Russian scientific collaborations in the Russian Arctic. U.S. funding for the RAISE Science Management Office ended on December 31, 2006 as part of a transition to facilitate U.S. - Russian field research in the Arctic through other mechanisms. In particular, overall science management activities and support for researchers funded through the Arctic System Science Program (ARCSS) of the U.S. National Science Foundation are increasingly being supported through a centralized ARCSS Science Management Office at the Arctic Research Consortium of the United States. More detailed information may be found at the RAISE website.
Eddy covariance measurements of carbon and energy fluxes over a larch forest tundra ecosystem near the latitudinal treeline were collected near Cherskii, Siberia, in summer 2001. Three towers were established to measure this fluxes and a series of basic micrometeorological variables were also measured, including vertical profiles of air temperature and relative humidity, wind speed, net radiation, albedo, incoming and outgoing long-wave radiation, wind direction, and precipitation. More detailed information may be found at the NSIDC website. Each of these stations are currently operational and will be maintatined by personnel from the AON project.
Pleistocene Park Tower
IIn contribution to the Arctic Observing Network, the researchers have established two observatories of landscape-level carbon, water, and energy balance at Toolik Lake, Alaska, and Cherskii, Russia. They also will form a network of observatories with Abisko (Sweden), Zackenberg (Greenland), and a location in the Canadian High Arctic providing further data points as part of IPY.
At Cherskii, a new 32m tower was deployed in Pleistocene Park, about 20 km south of NESS. This station is currently measuring fluxes of carbon dioxide, methane, water vapor and energy in addition to other meteorological variables. In partnership with NOAA, methane concentrations are being precisely measured and this flux will be back-calculated using a gradient technique. Data generated on the tower will contribute to the Global Monitoring Division of NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory as part of a global greenhouse monitoring network that provides the long-term atmospheric observational basis for improving understanding of the global and North American carbon cycle. This work aims to reduce uncertainties on and improve estimates of methane emissions from northern high-latitude ecosystems, and to ensure our ability to detect increases in methane emissions resulting from climate change.
Snow Station
Please contact Dr.Syndonia Bret-Harte for further details pertaining to this aspect of the project.