Bryan Curtis (LBNL) told me earlier this week that,
according to plan, the NGEE Arctic tram has performed admirably since it went
operational in May, 2015. The automated cart has made hundreds of trips down
the 65 meter track, once every 3 hours in fact, around the clock. During that
time a suite of sensors have monitored albedo, NDVI, and multiple components of
the surface energy balance as snow melted in the spring, low-lying area became
inundated with water, vegetation grew throughout the summer and senesced in
autumn, and then the onset of snow this winter. Throughout this time additional
measurements of soil temperature and moisture, chamber-based and eddy
covariance CO2 and CH4 flux, active layer thickness,
geophysics, and phenology were made either along the tram or within the tram
footprint. The co-location of so many high-resolution measurements, once
analyzed together, should yield an unprecedented dataset to inform scaling and
modeling. The NGEE Arctic team anticipates letting the tram operate for another
few weeks and then disassembling the system in early November.
