Time-lapse camera (phenocam) imagery of black sand extended growing season length experiment, 2022.

As a result of climate change, the Rocky Mountain Front Range is
experiencing warmer summers and potentially earlier snowmelt. Due to
the importance of snow for regulating soil temperature, growing
season length, and available moisture in alpine ecosystems, even
small shifts in the snow-free period could have large impacts. The
focus of the Black Sand Extended Growing Season Length Experiment is
to examine how terrain-related differences in climate exposure
influence the way alpine habitats respond to climate change via
earlier snowmelt. To simulate how climate exposure may affect plant
communities, NWT LTER researchers established 5 experimental sites
each containing a pair 10 x 40m rectangular plots. These sites
include north and south facing aspects, subalpine and alpine tundra
meadows in a range of hydrological conditions (e.g. dry meadows,
moist meadows, wet meadows). We accelerated snowmelt in one plot of
each block by adding chemically inert black sand, while keeping the
second plot as an unmanipulated control; black sand was added to
these plots after snow had naturally melted. This dataset includes
phenocam images from 2022.