Caribou-Poker Creeks Research Watershed NEON - United States of America

The Caribou-Poker Research Watershed hosts a set of co-located terrestrial and aquatic field sites on land owned by the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the Alaska Department of Natural Resources. Just 35 minutes outside of Fairbanks, the sites are easy to access from the Steese Highway. Remote sensing surveys of this field site collect lidar, spectrometer and high-resolution RGB camera data. The flux/meteorological tower at this site is 59’ with 5 measurement levels. The tower top extends above the vegetation canopy to allow sensors mounted at the top and along the tower to capture the full profile of atmospheric conditions from the top of the vegetation canopy to the ground. The tower collects physical and chemical properties of atmosphere-related processes, such as humidity, wind, and net ecosystem gas exchange. Precipitation data are collected by a Double Fence Intercomparison Reference (DFIR) near the tower and a series of throughfalls located in the soil array. This site has five soil plots placed in an array within the airshed of the flux tower. Field ecologists collect the following types of observational data at this site: Terrestrial organisms (birds, ground beetles, mosquitoes, plants, small mammals, soil microbes, ticks), Biogeochemical data, and and soil data. Total data products planned for this site: 117.