It has been a couple years in the making, but in early September we installed the tower infrastructures of our future snow stations! What are we talking about? Let’s take a look:
The Southeast Alaska Sustainability Strategy Investments (SASSi) through the US Forest Service were was a funding pool to fund community-led initiatives. In 2022, Hoonah Indian Association was awarded funding to increase our ability to quantify rainfall and snowfall in the Hoonah area. This work added onto an ongoing partnership with the City of Hoonah to measure snowpack in Gartina watershed. We started monitoring snowpack after the dry 2019 and 2020 summers that reduced water in our hydroelectric dam and city water supply. These new stations will be a huge upgrade to our old stations by providing real-time data, collecting multiple data points (soil moisture, air temperature, snow depth), and have real-time data export through the AT&T Cell Network
Project Goals
- Collect new and useful data for Hoonah to use including snow pack, soil moisture, and rain data.
- Provide the data to the City of Hoonah for future decision making during drier times
- Use the data to model snow pack across the Hoonah area to think about climate change and how it may impact deer, salmon, berry resources and more.
Phase 1 : Installing the Tower Infrastructure
We are implementing the structures in two phases. In early September we installed two snow station toers on the side of Ear Mountain in the Gartina Watershed. The towers are 12 feet tall from the ground to the top, and are buried 2.5 feet in the ground with poured concrete to stabilize them. We used cable to tie them out and made sure they would be secure from bears and weather. All of the gear was flown up there via helicopter which made all of this work possible! The stations are installed at about 1,500 feet and 750 feet of elevation to give us two comparison points for snow. Otherwise the supplies would be to heavy to move up the mountain. Thank you to the City of Hoonah for paying for the helicopter time!
You can watch one of the towers being installed here : ttps://www.facebook.com/reel/1542652963055352
Next Steps : Phase 2
By the time the snow flies this year we’ll be headed back up the mountain to install the the sensors and equipment on the towers. The equipment includes : rain gauge, snow sensor, soil moisture meter, solar panel, battery, controller, cell network model, and more! We’ve got some learning to do on how to program those and access the data, but we’ll keep you posted!
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