Nunatak Monitoring by the Southwest Alaska Network (SWAN): 2005-2016 — Data Package

This data package contains data from nunatak vegetation monitoring efforts in 2005 and 2016 at Kenai Fjords National Park (KEFJ) and Lake Clark National Park and Preserve (LACL) by the Southwest Alaska Inventory & Monitoring Network (SWAN). In 2005, the SWAN implemented a long-term monitoring program to assess status and trends in nunatak vegetation in KEFJ and LACL. The SWAN field crew visited eight sites to collect data relating to species richness, frequency, and vegetation structure. The 2016 field season marked the first revisit (second sampling event) at seven of the eight sites. Monitoring objectives for nunatak communities were to assess trends in vegetation composition (e.g., species richness, diversity) and structure (e.g., species height).

Nunataks are exposed mountain peaks or ridges that rise above the surrounding glacial ice. In Alaska, they occur primarily in the National Parks adjacent to the northern Gulf of Alaska (e.g., Lake Clark National Park & Preserve, Kenai Fjords National Park, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park & Preserve, Glacier Bay National Park & Preserve), where heavy snowfall maintains large glacier complexes in the Fairweather, Chugach, Kenai, and southern Alaska ranges. Nunataks are of interest to biologists because of their geographic isolation and because they may have supported plant and animal populations that survived the Last Glacial Maximum, approximately 20,000 years BP. In addition to harboring regional or globally rare species, nunataks are sensitive to changes in climate and can play an important role in the re-establishment of plant and animal communities in recently deglaciated areas. For these reasons, nunataks were selected as a vital sign for long-term monitoring in the Southwest Alaska Network (SWAN).

The SWAN Nunatak Monitoring data package comprises 1 EML metadata file and 5 CSV files. The 5 CSV files contain information on: (1) site and event data, including location data, for all monitoring events from 2005-2016; (2) species observations (including vascular plants, non-vascular plants, and lichen), frequency, and cover data from monitoring quadrats that were measured in both 2005 and 2016; (3) plant species and height class data from point-intercept surveys, 2016 only; (4) non-vascular plant species data from monitoring quadrats that were only measured in 2016; and (5) vascular plant species data from monitoring quadrats that were only measured in 2016. An additional monitoring protocol was introduced in 2016 to align future nunatak survey data with the SWAN protocol for ground-based monitoring of vegetation. For this reason, 3 files with point-intercept and quadrat-based survey results contain data from 2016 only.