HR: 1340h
AN: ED33B-0779    [Abstracts]
TI: Understanding Arctic River Systems: An Effort to Train Undergraduate and Graduate Students
AU: Gens, R
EM: rgens@asf.alaska.edu
AF: Geophysical Institute, UAF, 903 Koyukuk Dr., Fairbanks, AK 99775-7320 United States
AU: * Toniolo, H
EM: ffhat@uaf.edu
AF: Civil and Environmental Engineering Dept., UAF, 251 Duckering, Fairbanks, AK 99775-5900
AU: McCarthy, P
EM: mccarthy@gi.alaska.edu
AF: Geophysical Institute, UAF, 903 Koyukuk Dr., Fairbanks, AK 99775-7320 United States
AU: Prakash, A
EM: prakash@gi.alaska.edu
AF: Geophysical Institute, UAF, 903 Koyukuk Dr., Fairbanks, AK 99775-7320 United States
AB: Undergraduate and graduate student training is integral to the research and education efforts at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. A multidisciplinary group of four scientists got together to study the Colville River flowing across the Alaska North Slope. The idea was to understand the river as a system, rather than tackling it from the single perspective of knowing more about sedimentology, geology, geomorphology, hydrology, etc. The importance of using remote sensing data, together with field observations in an integrated Geographic Information System (GIS) environment was realized and taken as the central theme to proceed. In the last two years three undergraduate students have been trained in this multidisciplinary project and one graduate student has recently started her studies. Results from the study have also been incorporated in undergraduate courses in sedimentology and remote sensing, and are being used widely in public relations materials developed by the organization to reach out to a wider audience. From the research perspective, the use of satellite imagery to monitor temporal and spatial evolution in fluvial geomorphologic studies in temperate and tropical streams is well established in the literature. However, little work has been published on river studies conducted in cold settings, where the influences of river ice and permafrost on sediment transport processes are not clearly understood. The Colville River is the largest river draining the Brooks Range in Arctic Alaska. The stream pattern changes from braided to meandering as the river crosses the Arctic coastal plain. The reaches are highly unstable, with lateral changes in the order of a few to tens of meters per year in some river bends. The research was conducted using multisensor remote sensing images. Optical and microwave remote sensing data from 1995 to 2001 were used by students to carry out their projects, and these results are presented here. Future work will include the coupling of satellite imagery to fluvio-sedimentological and hydrological data. The final goal of this multidisciplinary approach is to develop protocols that may be used to monitor rivers in remote Arctic locations.
DE: 9310 Antarctica
DE: 9315 Arctic region
DE: 6605 Education
DE: 2776 Polar cap phenomena
DE: 1640 Remote sensing
SC: Education and Human Resourcese [ED]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting