Glaciers and climate of the upper Susitna Basin, Alaska; supporting data

As part of a study for a proposed hydropower facility, Alaska Division of Geological & Geophysical Surveys staff and project collaborators from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Alaska Energy Authority, and Colorado State University conducted extensive field observations in the Upper Susitna basin, a 13,289 km2 (5,130 mi2) glacierized catchment in central Alaska, in 2012-2014. We measured glacier mass balance and surface characteristics on the five largest glaciers in the Upper Susitna Basin to see how the glaciers have changed over recent years and estimate their contribution to the total runoff in the basin. We installed two large weather stations-one on West Fork Glacier and one adjacent to Susitna Glacier-to aid in glacier modeling. Around the rest of the basin, we installed 26 stations that measured air temperature and relative humidity, 10 of which also measured precipitation and nine of which measured soil temperature. These stations help to characterize the weather across a high elevation basin with very sparse measurements. We characterized soil profiles at nine sites to verify that they match up with mapped soil textures. This comprehensive data set includes meteorological, glacier mass balance, snow cover, and soil measurements. We also include digitized snow depth data from a set of similar observations collected in the 1980s. Users can access the complete report and digital data from the DGGS website: http://doi.org/10.14509/30138.