About Bonanza Creek LTER

The Bonanza Creek Long Term Ecological Research program is located in the boreal forests, or taiga, of interior Alaska, USA. Ecological research is conducted at two main facilities, Bonanza Creek Experimental Forest and Caribou-Poker Creeks Research Watershed. The LTER program is supported and hosted by the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the USDA Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station in the city of Fairbanks, Alaska. Major funding is provided by the National Science Foundation

Overview

The Bonanza Creek Long-Term Ecological Research program focuses on improving our understanding of the long-term consequences of changing climate and disturbance regimes in the Alaskan boreal forest. Our overall objective is to document the major controls over forest dynamics, biogeochemistry, and disturbance and their interactions in the face of a changing climate.

The forest dynamics theme addresses successional changes in population and community processes following disturbance, emphasizing the relative importance of historical legacies, stochastic processes, and species effects in determining successional trajectories and the sensitivity of these trajectories to climate. Changes in the carbon cycle during succession hinge on changes in forest dynamics and other element cycles, but also influence nutrient availability and microenvironment and therefore successional changes in forest dynamics. Regional and landscape controls over disturbance regime focuses on regional and landscape processes that are responsible for the timing, extent, and severity of disturbance.

Our research design uses experiments and observations in intensive sites in three successional sequences (floodplains, south-aspect uplands, north-aspect uplands) to document the processes that drive successional change. We establish the regional context for these intensive studies by analysis of ecosystem processes in two large regions, one in a relatively uniform region in interior Alaska and a second along a climate gradient from the warmest to the coldest areas in Alaska.

Synthesis of our research addresses three important ecological issues:

Species effects on ecosystem and landscape processes explores how species characteristics and diversity influence biogeochemistry and disturbance regime. Spatio-temporal scaling provides the conceptual basis for linking process and pattern. Ecosystem sustainability explores how the positive and negative feedbacks that operate within ecosystems influence the sensitivity of ecosystems to perturbations such as changes in climate and disturbance regime. More information can be found in our LTER3 document titled, Climate-Disturbance Interactions in the Alaskan Boreal Forest

Interior Alaska: The taiga ecosystem

The taiga forest of Alaska is part of a worldwide circumpolar band of boreal forest. Boreal forest consists of a mosaic of forest, grassland, shrubs, bogs, and alpine tundra that have formed primarily as a result of slope, aspect, elevation, parent material, and succession following disturbance. More information can be found below about the processes affecting the taiga ecosystem, as well as the plants and animals that live there.

Physiographic Region
Climate
Disturbance
Fauna
Permafrost
Vegetation

Research sites and experimental design

LTER scientists conduct research throughout Alaska, but the majority of research is done at either of our two premier research facilities in interior Alaska. Bonanza Creek Experimental Forest is located southwest of Fairbanks, Alaska and Caribou-Poker Creeks Research Watershed is northeast. Information about these two facilities can be found using the links below.

Bonanza Creek Experimental Forest (BCEF), located approximately 20 km southwest of Fairbanks along the Parks Highway, focuses on ecosystem controls in forest succession.

The Caribou-Poker Creeks Research Watershed (CPCRW) is a 10,400 ha upland research site 45 km north of Fairbanks. CPCRW is dedicated to research into hydrologic and environmental questions in the discontinous-permafrost boreal forest of the Yukon-Tanana Uplands of central Alaska.