These are the tools of the trade if you want to dig and move snow by hand.
Today was all about snow. Measuring snow, digging snow, moving snow, looking at snow, feeling snow, eating snow, (not the yellow stuff!), and basically becoming one with, well you know.
This first week of work is really all about moving equipment to the study site and then dealing with the snow on sites A, B, and C. These are the areas where the snow fences were installed last fall so that the snow would pile up on top of the tundra in some places while other places would receive a regular amount of the stuff. The regular areas would be the control sites. You can see the end of the fence in the photo with different amounts of snow on either side. So if the wind carried the snow to this site, which direction was the wind blowing?
The snow fence causes the snow to deposit on one side.
The snow fence blocks the wind on one side.
Before we started to dig up Site B Dr. Natali and I took the measurements for the snow depth on both sides of the fence. Using a metric measuring tape I sampled the depth every two meters from the fence until we were 12 to 16 meters away. The added snow on the site insulates the ground during the winter and keeps it from cooling down. So the ground under the thick snow cover is warmer than the control areas. How can that be?
Dr. Natali and I took snow depth measurements at site B
Everyone was busy moving snow from Site B.
After a good day of moving snow it was good to ride the snowmobile back home. We stopped to look at a couple of trees and just enjoyed the view. The sign we saw in town by the market a couple of days ago said it all........
It's easy to have a nice day in Healy!