Toolik Lake Area

Toolik Lake Area Vegetation

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location map for Toolik Lake Area

Figure 1. Location of the Toolik Lake Area (large red rectangle) and Toolik Lake Grid (small red rectangle) within the Upper Kuparuk River Region.
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Typical landscapes in the Upper Kuparuk River region:

Toolik Lake Area Published map


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Toolik Lake Area Published map


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Toolik Lake Area Published map


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Toolik Lake Area Published map


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About the map

The Toolik Lake vegetation area is located near the western boundary of the Upper Kuparuk River region and encloses a 20-km2 area surrounding Toolik Lake that stretches from the Dalton Highway on the east to Jade Mountain on the west. It includes the Toolik Field Station, the old Toolik Lake pipeline construction camp gravel pad and airstrip on the northeast side of the lake and the primary terrestrial research areas on the south, west and east sides of the lake, as well as several smaller research lakes in the immediate vicinity of Toolik Lake. The area contains surfaces with irregular topography that were glaciated during the Late Pleistocene (Fig. 2 and 3).

The vegetation map portrays the physiognomy of the dominant plant communities in each mapped polygon. Fifty-one 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: