Video
A Year at Gates Glacier Climate Monitoring Station, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve
Transcript
This video shows seasonal changes in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Alaska using time-lapse photography from the year 2016. After zooming across a satellite image of North America to eastern Alaska, we arrive at Wrangell-St. Elias, outlined in yellow. The location of the Gates Glacier climate monitoring station is marked by a red dot. A remote automated camera is mounted on a tripod, along with weather instruments. The time-lapse video was made from selected photos taken on days with good weather. The view is of a gentle slope near the camera, steeper slopes behind, and the rugged Wrangell Mountains in the background. The jumbled ice of Gates Glacier flows down the steep slope in the upper right side of the scene. The year begins with a snow-covered landscape. At the end of March an avalanche removes most of the snow from a strip of land in the upper left portion of the scene. In April this is the first area to melt free of snow, soon to be followed by other steep slopes nearby, and there the vegetation greens up in May. The big snowdrift near the camera melts in the beginning of June. Soon after, lupines sprout up from the ground and show their blue flowers, while white flowers of cow parsnip bloom on the avalanche slope. Around the first of August, the slope turns pink from fireweed. In September the vegetation turns brown, except for the evergreen crowberry dwarf shrubs on the ground near the camera. The snow returns in November, and by the end of the year it has covered all of the vegetation.
Description
This video was made from one full year of photographs taken in 2016 by a remote automated camera. This camera is located at the Gates Glacier climate monitoring station in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, in eastern Alaska. The video is a composite of selected photos from days with good weather.
Duration
2 minutes, 1 second
Credit
NPS/David Swanson
Date Created
05/26/2023
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