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An arduous and not-at-all-scenic commute to work!!!

First off, how's the commute? Well, let me take ya along for it. It's a lovely ~5 minutes through some woods and over Rock Creek (which conveniently offers a great view of some mountains). It looks something like the following. First little forested bit of trail leaving the C-Camp cabins towards headquarters

Views while crossing the road (I'm breaking continuity :o, this is from a commute home when we had bluer skies so the mountains contrast better than the white snow against the grey of the clouds)

The little trail continues on the other side of the road - with the snow retreating more each day.

NPS Denali headquarters building

Resources building - where I spend my days at the desk. This building is home to a whole assortment of folks in fields like ecology, hydrology, botany, wildlife biology, and acoustics! Natural Resources Stewardship and Science Directorate

What will I be doing?!

I'm with the Natural Sounds and Night Skies Division, specifically focusing on the natural sounds half of that partnership. The most relevant mandate for our work comes from Section 4.9, Soundscape Management in the NPS Management Policies.

The Service will take action to prevent or minimize all noise that through frequency, magnitude, or duration adversely affects the natural soundscape or other park resources or values, or that exceeds levels that have been identified through monitoring as being acceptable to or appropriate for visitor uses at the sites being monitored.

Practically, this means that we work on monitoring sounds across the park system and modeling noise impacts of human activity. The key difference between "sound" and "noise" is that "noise" is undesired.

On the field work side, I'll be helping place acoustic monitoring stations at several different locations across the park. I'll also help place a few aircraft monitoring loggers (ADS-B) since aircraft are one of the most significant human noise sources in Denali. Lots of folks are doing sightseeing tours and transiting to climb the mountain!

See the microphone on the right of this image for an example of an older monitoring setup the park previously deployed in the field. (Image from the lovely Denali Visitor Center)

On the desk side, I'll be be contributing to software (NPS Active Space) that models how far away someone can hear a sound from at a specific point on Earth, particularly focusing on aircraft noise. This involves combining microphone recordings, aircraft flight tracks, and some additional geospatial data for that specific location. Let me know if you have more questions or want to talk more details! Still learning by the day :)

Images of modeled active spaces generated using the software. The red X marks a listener location and the top 3 (Hawaii) / bottom 3 (Alaska) are each different views of the same location. Davyd H. Betchkal, J. Adam Beeco, Sharolyn J. Anderson, Brian A. Peterson, Damon Joyce, Using aircraft tracking data to estimate the geographic scope of noise impacts from low-level overflights above parks and protected areas, Journal of Environmental Management https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2023.119201. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301479723019898)

Sampling of this week's activities

Bear Safety Training!

Had a super cool bear safety training put on by the wildlife management folks this week. I'll preface this by deferring to the Denali Bear Safety page, but will share a few quick notes on safety here in the park. First and foremost, prevention is key! Store your food and smelly items properly in bear resistant food containers. Make your presence known. Be alert to your surroundings.

For encounters, the philosophy here emphasizes choosing how to react based on the behavior of the bear rather than the species (both grizzlies and black bears are present in Denali). A major distinction is between a defensive bear (feels threatened by you, should be addressed with calming behavior) and a curious/non-defensive bear (wants to learn more about you, should be deterred with aggressive behavior). In either case, you should have bear spray (most effective bear deterrent!) ready to deploy if they get too close. See the above page for more details. And remember, don't spray your bear spray in your own tent!

Also we got to deploy inert bear spray which was a great practice activity!

Hiking

Took a few different wanders over the weekend!

Photo I contributed to this fun timelapse project for science! Taken on the Roadside Trail

Wetlands, forest, and snowcapped peaks seen from the Roadside Trail

Snow along the Rock Creek trail (a slushy mudfest on Saturday afternoon)

Views of the Nenana River valley from the Mt. Healy Overlook Trail (looking out from the park)

The higher elevation snowy slopes of Mt. Healy. You could certainly still get after some skiing these days, although conditions are probably not ideal at this elevation.

And that's what we hiked up. Crazy how your little legs carry you around n up n down!

Overall was a fun lil excursion of about 2k ft of vert. Running (or maybe more like power hiking...) up to the top could be fun for some fitness once the snow clears off a little!

Wildlife

Monstrous (but still sluggish fortunately) early-season mosquitoes (apparently the big slow ones come first, followed by the speedy smaller ones). This one got a little too interested in me when I was about to hop in the shower, so I smacked it down with my shirt. Sorry ma'am but I'm sure y'all will be taking my blood later this summer so I'll try to fend you off while I can.

Moose (not) on the loose? The one seemed a bit confused about the construction fencing (which to be fair I'm not sure what exactly it's there for either) (image taken from my front porch!)

Roadside Ptarmigan (they're changing coat colors now - from white winter coats to brown summer ones) (clipped from a video which is why it's so grainy)

I also learned about the varied thrush call! It's like a short little whistley sound with all the energy into a similar frequency that can sound quite piercing.

Alpenglow

And finally, I'll leave you with a quick pic of one of my favorite mountain phenomenon, a swath of rosy alpenglow on the snowy peaks as seen around 11pm from C-Camp on my way to bed. There was a beautiful pink tone reflecting off the clouds in the direction of the sunset as well.