Imnavait Creek Area

Imnavait Creek Area Vegetation

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About the map

The Imnavait Creek vegetation area is located near the center of the Upper Kuparuk River region and encloses a 22-km2 area northeast of Toolik Lake, close to the southern foothills of northern Alaska. The Dalton Highway and the trans-Alaska pipeine both pass nearby.

Imnavait Creek is situated in a shallow basin at the foothills of the central Brooks Range. The hills near Imnavait Creek rise less than 100 m from the valley bottoms to the crests, and are elongated in SSE to NNW trending ridges. The west-facing aspects of these ridges are much gentler and longer than the east-facing aspects; in fact, over 60% of the terrain in the R4D region has NW/SW-facing aspects.Most hill crests have till at the surface, providing rocky mineral substrate for plant communities, whereas hill slopes and valley bottoms are generally smoothly eroded and covered by colluvium and shallow peat deposits.

The vegetation map portrays the physiognomy of the dominant plant communities in each mapped polygon. (Number??) landcover types were recognized in the field (minimum mapping unit approximately 250 m2). These were later grouped into the 14 physiognomic vegetation units on the map, which correspond to the same units on the 1:63,360-scale map of the upper Kuparuk River region.

Themes:

The map includes the following detailed geobotanical themes: