Toolik Field Station (TFS), operated by the University of Alaska Fairbanks and funded by a cooperative agreement with National Science Foundation, provides science support to researchers and students from across the world. The following services are extensively used by the Arctic LTER.

  • Toolik Field Station Environmental Monitoring Program:  The ARC-LTER and its precursor projects have maintained an environmental monitoring program at Toolik Lake since 1975, including basic weather data (beginning in 1988) as well as stream and lake observations.  In September 2006 the Toolik Field Station assumed responsibility for maintenance and data management of the main Toolik weather station, which ARC-LTER had been supporting since 1988.  Toolik Field Station weather data are available from the TFS Environmental Data Center and Arctic Data Center.  The TFS Environmental Data Center has additional observational components including plant phenology, snow cover, bird observations, and other year-round observations of weather and natural history that cannot be made by LTER personnel who are not year-round residents. They also provide field assistance for our researchers at the station as well as remote assistance for sample collection, instrument troubleshooting, etc. 
  • The Toolik Field Station GIS and Remote Sensing (TSF-GIS) service was developed with support from the NSF Office of Polar Programs to help manage and support research-based at TFS including Arctic LTER research.  This GIS is maintained by a full-time GIS and Remote Sensing Manager and includes a multilayer GIS based largely on the Geobotanical Atlas data, combined with land ownership information, roads and pipelines, and disturbances. 
  • Newly developed is a Research Plots Dashboard where you can “review current and historic Toolik research project information, explore where data were collected over the years, and discover what was learned.”  Selecting individual points on the map produces a pop-up window providing hyperlinks to associated Principal Investigator(s) and project publications, and links to project data (when available). 
  • TFS-GIS operates several Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) for RGB and NDVI imagery of study sites near Toolik.  High-resolution Digital Surface Models can also be created from the UAS imagery.  Arctic LTER routinely requests this service in support of our research, and our feedback to GIS managers helps to improve the products and services.  The data products from these requests reside at TFS-GIS and are available to other researchers.