Arctic GIS Workshop Poster Abstract

22-24 January 2001
Bell Harbor International Conference Center
Seattle, Washington

GIS Support for Hydrologic Monitoring on Alaska's North Slope

Tim Hammond and Jon Kostohrys
U.S. Department of the Interior Bureau of Land Management, Northern Field Office, 1150 University Avenue Fairbanks, Alaska 99709, Phone: 907/474-2210, tim_hammond@ak.blm.gov

Water resources of the Northeastern National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska are critical for oil exploration and development activities, as well as to the fisheries, wildlife and subsistence resources. Winter water withdrawals are needed for exploratory drilling, ice roads, ice airstrips, and camp use. Spring breakup and summer streamflow patterns affect developmental infrastructure location and design. Lake and river inventories provide information required in the environmental evaluation process. Models used in the process require data that are difficult and expensive to obtain in large, remote regions such as the North Slope of Alaska. GIS can provide data more efficiently and often at better quality than traditional methods. This poster outlines a repeatable, portable process for using GIS to develop data about the hydrologic character of a region.