Garrett Keyl, University of Tennessee
The GLORIA (Global Observation Research Initiative in Alpine Environments) project is a global project that maps out plant species on different summit altitudes. Data is taken every five years and is compared to track changes in plant, lichen, and bryophyte species. The surveys are conducted in order to determine how these alpine plants are affected by changing temperatures and more extreme weather. The data taken from British Columbia is compared to data taken all across the globe in Europe as well as Africa. Every year the temperature is measured with a temperature logger and the data collected every five years. The Temperature logs are important for noting any changes in temperature over the course of the project and helping to show what the optimal temperature is for plants at each alpine level. Tracking plant populations are very important especially for the Atlin area. Animals such as caribou often eat lichen and other non-vascular plants under the snow in the winter. Vascular plants are important for pollination as well as a food source for animals during the warm summer months. Some of these plants are only able to thrive in very specific areas such as a Nival summit or in high alpine areas. It is important to track these changes in plant populations to help better understand how to keep them in these important areas as well as examining how climate change has affected these species.
Sentinel mountain is the tallest mountain used for research in the GLORIA project. The data gathered from this four-day backpacking trip will be used to track and monitor species at different elevations which include Nival, high alpine, low alpine, and tree line. This trip was to record species at the Nival level which is the highest summit of the four.
The first day we hiked out to our basecamp halfway up the mountain and set up for the next two days of data gathering. Once we set up camp, we were able to determine what we needed to take to the top the next day. When everyone was awake on the second day, we quickly ate breakfast and started to climb to the top. At the top we had to find the plots from five years ago in order to set up the survey accurately. Finding the plots for data collection and setting up the survey was the longest part of the project and took us nearly the full day to set up. We were only able to survey one of the four three-meter by three-meter plots the first day. We then repacked important items that we couldn’t leave at the summit and headed back down for dinner. That night we made ramen and went to bed early in order to get up and climb to the top again the next morning.
On the second day we got up and made breakfast again and then climbed back up the mountain in order to finish the project. Now that everything was set up and the plots were all laid out, we were finally able to survey the remaining three plots. Each three-meter by three-meter plot is subdivided into one-meter plots. We surveyed the one-meter plots in each corner and used two survey methods to count the lichen and bryophytes in the plot: estimating the percent cover of lichen and bryophytes over the rocks; and a point hit method. Each subplot had 100 points on it that were laid across the plot using string and the species underneath each point was recorded. This method was done on each subplot in each cardinal direction for a total of sixteen times on this summit. The process for the project took our group a total of twelve hours across two days. Both days totaled over 70 person hours of work on top of Sentinel summit.
At the end of day two of the GLORIA project we hiked back down the mountain to have dinner and get ready to backpack out the next day. However, once we reached camp it had gotten very windy, and it remained windy for the rest of the night. Everyone’s tents were shaking, and no one was able to sleep well that night. Surprisingly though nobody’s tents broke or fell apart that night. On the final day of the project, we packed all of our gear and hiked out back to the truck. On the way we saw several moose tracks as well as bear scat. Once we got back into town, we stopped at the bakery to eat and talk about the next project.