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BERING LAND BRIDGE NATIONAL PRESERVE

Purposes, Natural & Cultural Resources, and FacilitiesBud Rice, Environmental Protection Specialist, NPS Alaska Region

Bering Land Bridge

National Preserve

is a subset of Beringia, a

former massive land bridge

between Asia and North

America during ice ages.

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BERING LAND BRIDGE NATIONAL PRESERVE (BELA) was established for the following purposes and values:

• SEC. 201. The following areas are hereby established as units of the National Park System and shall be administered by the Secretary under the laws governing the administration of such lands and under the provisions of this Act:

• (2) Bering Land Bridge National Preserve, containing approximately two million four hundred and fifty-seven thousand acres of public land, as generally depicted on map numbered BELA-90,005, and dated October 1978. The preserve shall be managed for the following purposes, among others: To protect and interpret examples of arctic plant communities, volcanic lava flows, ash explosions, coastal formations, and other geologic processes; to protect habitat for internationally significant populations of migratory birds; to provide for archeological and paleontological study, in cooperation with Native Alaskans, of the process of plant and animal migration, including man, between North America and the Asian Continent; to protect habitat for, and populations of, fish and wildlife including, but not limited to, marine mammals, brown/grizzly bears, moose, and wolves; subject to such reasonable regulations as the Secretary may prescribe, to continue reindeer grazing use, including necessary facilities and equipment, within the areas which on January 1, 1976, were subject to reindeer grazing permits, in accordance with sound range management practices; to protect the viability of subsistence resources; and in a manner consistent with the foregoing, to provide for outdoor recreation and environmental education activities including public access for recreational purposes to the Serpentine Hot Springs area. The Secretary shall permit the continuation of customary patterns and modes of travel during periods of adequate snow cover within a one-hundred-foot right-of-way along either side of an existing route from Deering to the Taylor Highway, subject to such reasonable regulations as the Secretary may promulgate to assure that such travel is consistent with the foregoing purposes.

Generalized Plant Communities in BELA

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Vegetation Patterns are Dynamic near the Coast

Beach Ridges and Thaw Lakes

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Is this the Northern most eelgrass bed? (from Wyllie-Echeverria & Ackerman 2003, in World Atlas of Seagrasses)

Eelgrass (left) compared to P. pectinatus (right)

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Locations of eelgrass beds (Zostera marina) in the eastern Bering Sea

(McRoy 1968)

The northern limit of eelgrass (Zostera marina) in Pacific North America

Area= 2 -3 km2

Biomass = 500 g m-2

Shoots = 4600 # m-2

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National Park ServiceArctic Network

Inventory and Monitoring Program

Yellow-billed Loon Monitoring

Melanie Flamme1, Tara Whitesell1, Eric Sieh1/2, Angela Matz2, Ed Mallek2

National Park Service1 , U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service2

Photo by Ken Wright

Significance For ManagementYellow-billed Loons

• ARCN high-priority vital sign determining ecosystem health

– Large-bodied, long-lived and philopatric

– Top trophic-level predators (obligate piscivores)

– Indicators of persistent bio-accumulative contaminants and water-quality

• ANILCA (1980)-CAKR and BELA to protect birds and their habitats

• ~20% of U. S. population occurs in NPS protected lands in Western Alaska

• Collaboration with USFWS and USGS (contaminants, surveys)

• Species warranted as threatened by USFWS

Photo by Tara Whitesell

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YBLO Aerial Survey Area (Bollinger et al. 2007-USFWS)

CAKR

BELA

CAKR

8 YBLO1 nest

BELA

176 YBLO13 nests5 eggs

YBLO/plot 2009

1-2

3-8

9-15

16-25

Adapted from Bollinger et al. 2007.

YBLO Occupancy 2009

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Field- And GIS-Based Measurements of Coastal Change

for National Parks

bordering the Southeast Chukchi Sea, Alaska

William F. Manley INSTAAR, University of Colorado

Diane M. Sanzone Arctic I&M Program, National Park Service

James W. Jordan Dept. of Environmental Studies, Antioch University New England

Owen K. Mason GeoArch Alaska

Eric G. Parrish INSTAAR, University of Colorado

Leanne R. Lestak INSTAAR, University of Colorado

NPS State of the Arctic Parks Workshop -- February 15, 2007

See also: instaar.colorado.edu/QGISL/ARCN/

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Coastal Monitoring Stations

• 27 sites

• first established 1987-1994

• revisited in 2006

• measured on “bluff top”

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• from NOAA & NPS 1:24,000 natural color photos

• mosaic created by Aero-Metric

• 0.6 m resolution

• accuracy: 1.1 m (RMSE)

• 103 tiles, 94 GB: lots of imagery!

• highest res. in Alaska for this large of an area

• available to the public early 2007

• valuable for other types of research

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1949

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1985

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2003

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Beach Ridge with Features

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Sites on the Seward Peninsula

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An Archeology Site Near the Coast

Erosion of sandy site in BELA

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Archeology site beyond the edge

Points and Microblades

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Bearded Seals are an Ice Dependent Seal that Uses Coastal

areas near BELA

Bearded seals have been tagged and tracked in a study with

ADFG, NOAA, and local Native tribes. Note the use of these

seals in the Bering Straits area during the month of

October. As winter progresses many seals migrate south

into the Bering Sea, only to return again in spring.

Bearded seal or ugruk is a large ice-dependent seal. Because

their sea ice habitat is retreating more and more during

recent summers, this species is being considered for

threatened status. Data from these slides on seals are from:

http://kotzebueira.org/current_projects4.html

Ringed Seals also Rely on Sea Ice near BELA and Beyond

Ringed seals have also been captured and tagged with

transmitters. This seal species is much smaller than the

bearded seal, but it is extremely important to polar bears

and indigenous hunters in the Bering Straits area. These

seals haul out and rear young on sea ice, but loss of ice

habitat, particularly multi-year ice, could cause reductions

in reproduction and their population.

Movement of male ringed seals in fall 2008, show a heavy

reliance on areas in and near the Bering Straits. Similar maps

track the movements of female ribbon seals. Data from these

slides on seals are from:

http://kotzebueira.org/current_projects4.html

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Comparison of Bearded and Ringed Seal Use of Area Habitat

Both species are heavily dependent on sea ice for their life cycle and may be listed as threatened species in

the future. They are important prey species for polar bear and subsistence hunters.

Bearded seals were tagged and tracked in the Bering

Straits area in October 2009

Ringed seals were tagged and tracked during the

same period in October 2009

Subsistence Harvest of Marine and other Foods are Important

to Seward Peninsula People

Harvesting a seal from the sea in the region.

Drying seal meat on a drying rack in the region.

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Percent Subsistence Harvest of Resources for 12

Communities around Seward Peninsula

Estimated Kilograms of Subsistence Harvest by Resources and

Communities in Bering Straits Region 2005-2006

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Wales Subsistence Harvest of Resources

Source: Kawerak, Inc. North Pacific Research Board, Alaska Department of Fish & Game, 2005-2006

Comprehensive Subsistence Harvest Survey, Bering Strait/Norton Sound Region.

Shishmaref Subsistence Harvest of Resources

Source: Kawerak, Inc. North Pacific Research Board, Alaska Department of Fish & Game, 2005-2006 Comprehensive

Subsistence Harvest Survey, Bering Strait/Norton Sound Region.

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Subsistence Harvest Composition of Resources in 12

Communities around Seward Peninsula

Source: Kawerak, Inc. North Pacific Research Board, Alaska Department of Fish & Game, 2005-2006

Comprehensive Subsistence Harvest Survey, Bering Strait/Norton Sound Region

NATIVE ALLOTMENTS IN BELA

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Access to the Coast of BELA

Facilities in BELA

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Other structures and Installations in BELA

QUESTIONS?

• Please contact me with questions about this

presentation at Bud_Rice@nps.gov or 907-644-3530

• For questions about Bering Land Bridge National

Preserve, please contact Superintendent Jeanette

Pomrenke at jeanette_pomrenke@nps.gov or 907-

443-2522

• For questions about the Western Arctic National

Parklands overall, please contact Superintendent

Frank Hays at frank_hays@nps.gov or 907-442-3890