NRCS Alaska News

January 5, 2007

In This Issue

Exploring the Upper Reaches of Amazon Reveals Familiar Resource Issues

The temperature is warm, the soil red, the air moist, and smiles on the children inquisitive, but the issues facing the riberenos - the indigenous people of the Amazon River - are familiar.

Peru contains some of the most spectacular environments in Latin America, ranging from the High Andes to the Amazonian basin.  The Amazon, by name, begins 2,500 miles from its mouth in the northeast corner of Peru, where the waters of the Río Napo and the Río Ucayali meet.  A short distance upstream, past Peru’s major port of Iquitos, is the confluence of the Ucayali and Marañón Rivers.  Rising near the peak of Yerupaja (21,760 feet), the Marañón was long argued to be the Amazon’s source.  For this reason, Soil Survey Project Leader Mark Clark and I decided this was where we wanted to explore during our first visit to the Amazon.

Our destination was the Reserva Nacional Pacaya-Samiria, one of the largest conservation areas in Peru, five million acres accessible only by boat. The river corridors are the best places to observe wildlife and to visit with the riberenos.  There are two species of river dolphin in the Amazon area: the Boto and the Tucauxi, both of which we saw. It was incredible to finally see the Pink Amazon Dolphins (Boto), of which I could only write about years ago, with their extended, whiskered beak, large flippers, and their bright pink bodies surfacing against the chocolate brown water. 

Early morning and evening excursions by dugout canoe and skiff provided several observations of birdlife including the rarely seen Russet Back Oropendola and the Harpy Eagle.  Toucans, parrots, macaws, of all colors of the rainbow, were frequent sights.  Mammals and other terrestrial wildlife were more difficult to observe.  The forest is at its densest along the river margins.  Within, the diffused light reduces the density of the understory.  Long, trailing lianas are plentiful.  These woody vines bind even the tallest trees together in an embrace so tight that even in death they may be prevented from falling.

We found several species of poisonous dart frogs, helicopter dragonflies, the Amazon Crested Toad, three Anacondas, and even a deadly fer-de-lance slithered across our trail.  In the overstory, iridescent blue morpho butterflies streaked through the jungle vines where three-toed sloths were spotted, with difficulty, as were the small, beautiful Saddleback Tamarins, Dusky Titi Monkey and the hard to observe, Owl Monkey.  We also saw a family of Collard Peccary and Capybara and had the pleasure to dine on the cuisine: guinea pig and Paca roasted split over a fire.

We had the privilege to visit two villages that had never seen a white person before.  Children, huddled together, at first hesitant of the “face peelers,” soon greeted us with song and beautiful smiles when we presented gifts of pencils, note pads, and other school supplies.  Crime and drugs are not found in these isolated villages; but neither is medical care or jobs.

The collision of two cultures was prevalent in the healing hut of a local shaman.  The shaman enlists denizens of the spirit world to help in a variety of duties, from healing the sick to assisting a deceased person’s soul into the afterworld.  The shaman we visited had two apprentices, one a young female from a nearby village and the other, a healer from a village in Ecuador who was displaced when a massive oil spill devastated his village.  The shaman used ayahuasca or caapi in his spiritual healing craft.  Immediately noticeable in his healing hut were Christian ornaments of the manger scattered among his traditional medicines.  Missionaries are common along the Amazon, but in many villages doctors are rare. While eating lunch with a local family, we noticed a long scar on one of their child’s legs.  She had been bit by a fer-de-lance while picking corn.  Luckily for this child, a shaman was near by and saved her life.  During one of our visits to another village, where a shaman was not close, one of the locals died after being bitten by the snake.

After seven days of experiencing the ecosystems of the Amazon headwaters I had found myself questioning once again, our western thinking of progress. And the happy, innocent faces of the children of the peaceful riberenos who have lived and made their living in this wilderness for century upon century; I wonder how long they will be able to cling to their ways in the face of encroaching modernity.  Many are dislodged by government policies favoring agro-industry over traditional subsistence farming.  Plantations of cash crops and fast growing timber, and increased mechanization of agriculture have also forced people from their small holdings, leaving them no choice but to move to city shanty towns.  While in Machu Picchu, we heard news that one of the largest oil reserves in Peru or even South America had just been discovered—60 miles south of Iquitos along the headwaters of the Amazon, along the Río Marañón.

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Three New SNOTEL Sites Installed in 2006

Installing and maintaining the equipment that keeps Alaskans apprised of the quality, quantity, temperature and location of snow (and thus streamflow during Spring melt) requires gargantuan feats of planning, a dose of patience and a heaping helping of good luck. There’s the need to transport thousands of pounds of equipment to incredibly remote locations via boat, small aircraft and helicopter sling. Amd not unlike most Alaska field work, you must be willing to have your travel plans interrupted for hours or days by hiker rescues, fog, torrents and downpours. And highly desirable is the ability to avoid bears and withstand mosquitoes for extended periods.

Last summer the snow survey staff installed three new SNOTEL (SNOw TELemetry) sites, each with unique challenges. 

Tokositna Valley: The season began in June with the installation of Tokositna Valley located in Denali State Park where Ramsdyke Creek enters the Tokositna River.  Since 1980, an aerial marker has been used to record snow depth which, in 1990 at 104 inches, would have buried the NBA’s Yao Ming with a foot of snow.  The Tokositna Valley site was installed in cooperation with the Denali National Park Service Central Alaska Network and is sending hourly data to the ambcs.org website and to the National Water and Climate Center (NWCC).  The site is reporting current, maximum, minimum and average air temperature, snow water content, snow depth, precipitation (storage and tipping bucket), and solar radiation. The site has three soil moisture/soil temperature probes located at 2, 8 and 20 inches from the soil surface.  The site received 26 inches of precipitation during the first two months of operation - 10.1 inches in a single day (August 19, 2006) when the Parks Highway washed out at Troublesome Creek.

Installing the Tokositna SNOTEL site involved transporting 5,000 pounds of construction equipment to Mile 131 of the Parks Highway, unloading at a modified helicopter pad, and slinging the load to the National Park Service Llama helicopter (used for Mt McKinley rescues). Low clouds forced a one day delay in the beginning, and at the end of our operation we waited an extra five hours because the helicopter was evacuating a climber from Mt. McKinley.

Strawberry Reef: The new Strawberry Reef SNOTEL site was installed in July on a barrier island located on the eastern side of the Copper River Delta in the Gulf of Alaska.  This site has no previous record and was installed in cooperation with the Prince William Sound Science Center and the Alaska Ocean Observing System.  The site reports hourly air temperature, precipitation (storage), wind speed and direction, barometric pressure, and solar radiation, and provides daily reports of the maximum, minimum, and average air temperatures.  The site has collected 21.5 inches of rain since October 1^st, the beginning of the current Water Year.

The logistics for installing the site at Strawberry Reef were the most difficult:  1) moving 5,000 pounds of equipment from a Cordova warehouse to the Coast Guard base; 2) arranging for the Coast Guard to sling the equipment 30 miles to the site between training missions and weather delays; 3) chartering a Super Cub single engine aircraft to fly the crew, one at a time, to the beach landing site which took a hour round trip.  Despite recent rainfalls, the beach surface it was hard enough for landing on the scheduled dates of the install. Each day from the air we saw bears eating the wild strawberries surrounding the site, but fortunately did not encounter any while hiking in to site location.  Fortunately good weather prevailed until we departed, when the rain resumed.

Upper Nome Creek: During the first week of August the snow survey crew headed to Fairbanks and with help from Jennifer Erxleben, a forecast hydrologist from the Portland NWCC, installed the third and final site of the summer.  The new site, Upper Nome Creek, is off the Steese Highway in the White Mountains, located across Beaver Creek from the Upper Nome Creek Campground.  This SNOTEL site is reporting hourly data including current, maximum, minimum and average air temperature, precipitation (storage and tipping bucket), snow depth, solar radiation, and 3 soil moisture/soil temperature readings (2,8,20 inches).

The Upper Nome Creek SNOTEL site was relatively straightforward other than driving 1.5 hours north of Fairbanks daily (it took 3 days to install the site).  We hauled in the pickup and a trailer carrying approximately 4000 lbs of construction materials to the site the first day. There were some delays getting to the site due to road construction; they were widening and straightening the access road to Nome Creek where people float on Beaver Creek to the Yukon River. 

Photo: Dan Kenney wiring the sensors on the Meteorological tower at Tokositna Valley SNOTEL site. Photo by Rick McClure.

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Snow Survey Bear Tales

On May 29, 1992, George Clagett, Alaska Snow Survey Supervisor from 1976 to 1993, had been King salmon fishing on the Kenai River and was headed back to Anchorage when he decided to stop by a SNOTEL site to do some early season maintenance. The site is located in the Kenai Moose Refuge on the Kenai Peninsula. The moose refuge is a series of large pens, one inside the other, that hold moose in a several square mile area. The resident moose are part of a cooperative research project conducted by the State of Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game and the US Fish and Wildlife Service. 

The SNOTEL site had a punch tape recorder on a snow pillow and a rocket-type precipitation gauge. Stopping by this site required a three hour detour on a gravel road. The recorders had stilling wells and the precipitation gauge needed to be drained so it would not overflow.

When George drove up to the SNOTEL site, which is about 100 feet from the gravel access road, a good-sized black bear stood upright on its hind legs next to the snow pillow and put its paw on one of the five-foot stakes marking the corners of the snow pillow. The bear had his nose up in the air testing the wind and it would have been a great picture with the bear, shelter, precipitation gauge and snow pillow. However, George did not have his camera. 

The bear wandered off as George got out of his Ford Ranger and walked down the path to the site. After performing the necessary maintenance at the site, George returned to his pickup truck to find a hip boot hanging halfway out of the tailgate and the black plastic bag which held the 25-pound king salmon he had just caught, gone from the bed of his truck, never to be seen again. It turns out that the black bear had probably smelled the fish as George pulled up, and so it circled around and snatched the tasty fish out of the pickup while George was busy working on the site.

The very next year, on June, 2 1993, George was back at the same site to perform the early season maintenance. This time he was prepared with his camera, however, no bears were present upon his arrival at the site. George began to drain the precipitation gauge then he got distracted, forgot about the gauge and by the time he realized it had drained the gauge dry. About a mile from the site is the refuge caretaker’s cabin where he drove to get some water to add to the gauge so it would be functional through the summer. When he returned, there were three bears at the site - a sow with two cubs. George revved up his engine and came to a quick stop in hopes of scaring the bears away. The noise scared the two cubs up a birch tree next to the shelter and made ‘Momma’ bear mad. Unfortunately, when George had left the site to go fetch the water, he left his camera near the shelter, sitting on top of his camera bag. With the two cubs up the tree, and ‘Momma’ not willing to go very far from the cubs, George sat in his pickup to think about his predicament. George finally got out of his pickup, the sow angrily snapped her jaws, George got back into the truck. Soon he got out again and she charged him down the path, luckily it was a false charge. George did this a couple of times.

George stayed near the truck but never retreated, thinking he could jump in the pickup in time if the charge was not false. (Bears are very fast and extremely strong and I am not sure how close I would let one get to me.) Meanwhile, the sow began to snoop around George’s camera and he knew that with one bite, she could put it out of commission. Sitting and watching the bear check out his camera was too much for George to take so he made a risky and brave decision: he made a mad rush at the bear and chased her off from the site. She moved away from the site but she was still really agitated, snapping her jaws at George because the cubs were still up the tree next to the shelter. Quickly, George gathered up his camera and tools and put water in the precipitation gauge. The whole time ‘Momma’ bear was within 60 feet of him and jaw-snapping mad. 

George finished his tasks and headed back down the trail with his gear when he saw ‘Momma’ bear jump in the back of his truck, lift his spare tire in her teeth, and pitch it 15 feet. The bear was mad. George was mad too. He chased her out of his pickup. George retrieved his flat spare - ruined with numerous puncture holes in the sidewalls - and put the tools and camera in the truck. George had established dominance by not retreating from the bear’s false charges, but ended up losing a spare tire in the end.

Caption for photo:  Grizzly bear silhouette in Denali National Park.  Photo taken by:  Tom Perkins, NWCC

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Photo Contest Wrap Up

NRCS Alaska staff and Earth Team volunteers entered 178 photos into this year’s Conservation Photo Contest.  Judging will take place January 11.  The judges for this year’s contest are Pam Taber, Bob Jones, Tom Hedt, Phil Naegele, and John Ellis.  The top three photos in each category will be awarded a spot award. The top photo in each category will be framed for display in the office of the State Conservationist.

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