Location Information

The USDA UV-B Monitoring site is located about 30 miles north of Fairbanks and is about 2 degrees south of the Arctic Circle. The instruments are on the roof of a 2 story building on a ridge top at the Poker Flat Research Range. The Poker Flat Research Range is the world's only scientific rocket launching facility owned by a university. This facility is operated by the University of Alaska's Geophysical Institute under contract to NASA. In addition to launching sounding rockets, Poker Flat is home to many scientific instruments designed to study the atmosphere and ionosphere and home to one of the USDA UV-B Monitoring sites. The surrounding area is mostly black spruce forest. The data loggers are inside the building just below the instruments which keeps them at room temperature year round. The instruments operate year round even though the shorter wavelengths in the UV are too low to measure for a few weeks around the winter solstice. There have been no problems with winter weather. The Alaska site also has a barometer and a UV-A sensor connected to the UV-MFR data logger. The site was installed August 2000.

Possible Obstructions: Alaska has the UVA instrument which obstructs the PAR instrument at low Sun angles, plus there is an adjacent telescope dome which obstructs portions of the entire instrument array at certain times for long durations during spring and autumn.