Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve Visibility Monitoring Program. 2004 Integrated Report for Scene Monitoring. (May 6, 2004 through October 6, 2004.)

摘要

Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve (GLBA) comprises 3.3 million acres and encompasses 940 square miles of marine waters. It is home to a variety of marine flora and fauna and is a major destination where most visitors arrive via marine vessels. Legislation that established the National Park Service (NPS) and Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, as well as other laws, obliges the NPS to anticipate and mitigate the potential effects of marine vessels on park resources and values. In May 2004, the National Park Service initiated a visibility monitoring program to characterize vessel operations and observed impacts at Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve. A high-resolution digital camera system was installed on an unnamed island southeast of Blue Mouse Cove on May 6, 2004. The camera views vessel traffic and visibility conditions on the West Arm channel of Glacier Bay, approximately 5 miles to the northeast. Included in the vista are the Tidal Inlet and Glacier Bay Wilderness mountain ridge between Tidal Inlet and Tlingit Point. The West Arm channel is the primary channel for visitor vessel traffic. Collected images provide a means to document the frequency and duration of vessel activity and qualitatively review subtle color variations, which are important for discerning ground-based and elevated hazes and plumes. Unless associated with concurrent human observation measurements and advanced analysis, digital images do not measure plume intensity or opacity. This integrated report of scene monitoring data describes the monitoring configuration and presents the operational status and analytical results of all digital image data collected during the 2004 monitoring season. Qualitative analysis has been performed on the data to characterize the types and frequency of haze and vessel-related activity that influenced the region. A summary of the analysis concisely identifies the number and percent of days that vessel exhaust or haze was observed and the typical duration (15 minutes minimum) of exhaust and/or haze impacts.