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.

受气候变化影响，落基山脉前岭（Rocky Mountain Front Range）正经历夏季升温与融雪时间提前的变化。鉴于积雪在调节高山生态系统的土壤温度、生长季时长与有效水分方面发挥关键作用，无雪时段的微小变动都可能引发显著影响。本黑砂延长生长季实验（Black Sand Extended Growing Season Length Experiment）的核心目标，是探究因地形差异导致的气候暴露度差异，如何通过融雪提前的途径，影响高山生境对气候变化的响应模式。为模拟气候暴露度对植物群落的影响，西北领地长期生态研究站点（NWT LTER）的研究者设立了5个实验样地，每个样地包含一对10×40米的矩形样方。这些样地涵盖了北向、南向坡向的生境，以及不同水文条件下的亚高山与高山苔原草甸（例如干旱草甸、湿润草甸与湿生草甸）。我们通过施加化学惰性黑砂，加速了每个配对样方组中一个样方的融雪过程，另一个样方则作为未受人为干预的对照；黑砂是在积雪自然融化后施加至这些样方中的。本数据集包含2022年的物候相机（phenocam）影像数据。