EPOW - Ecology Picture of the Week

Braids Below

Braided River Course
Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, Alaska, USA

Explanation:  Braids below!  Or, more accurately, braided river channels below.

We are flying at about 1000 feet (300 m) elevation, doing about 90 knots, over a most remote and uninhabited part of our globe.  This is a seldom-visited place called Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, located in north-central Alaska well above the Arctic Circle.

The photos in this week's episode represent a major project I designed to record high-resolution, low-level aerial photos along flight transects in a number of remote arctic parks and reserves of Alaska, as a way to provide a baseline of conditions from which future changes can be measured. 

Below us, this week, are major wild, unconstrained river courses, braiding and winding amidst dryas tundra and black spruce forests.  How these conditions will change under regional climate warming and accelerating disturbances, especially increases in tundra fires, is the topic of our research.