Media Category: Sites

The carbon trend over time at the Bonanza Creek LTER.

Field Technician Sarah Kennings flushes a chamber to ensure the concentration of CO2 inside matches the ambient atmosphere around it. After ceiling the container with the orange clips shown, the IRGA (photo center, in clear box) will be able to measure how the concentration inside changes, allowing scientists to calculate the rate of CO2 change, or gas flux.

Treatment plots were created in 2005, with solar powered pumps taking water from the trench dug around the lowered plot and moving it to the raised plot. This creates three different water table levels that can tell scientists more about how water changes the way peat stores carbon.

Viewing Alpha, the rich fen, from what locals call “The Bluff”.

While driving along the Park’s highway to the Bonanza Creek Experimental Forest, keen eyed technicians may be able to spy Denali on particularly clear days. Denali Days always bring good luck.

Portable Infrared Gas Analyzers (IRGAs) are used to measure the concentration of CO2 at the Alaska Peatland Experiment. Since the program started in 2005, the ambient amount of CO2 in the air has gone from roughly 379 ppm to 425ppm! (data via Lan, X., Tans, P. and K.W. Thoning: Trends in globally-averaged CO2 determined from NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory measurements. Version 2025-05 https://doi.org/10.15138/9N0H-ZH07)