I went out with Christian and Rosvel today to the area known as the Gradient Site. We talked about the experiment that is on going, and that Christian has been helping to work on for six years, and a bit about the history of how this experiment came to be. I want to share what I learned today and highlight the fact that this story is a very good example of how the scientific method works. For my students I will remind you all that the scientific method is the process that we use each time we conduct an experiment in the class and then write a laboratory report. It is the process that that allows for organized thinking to be defined and measured, and the shared and repeated. Remember students, you are writing your lab reports not for yourselves, but for someone who can understand and test your conclusions.
As we walked out to the Gradient Site Christian told Rosvel and me about the history of the experiments.
Once upon a time there was, and still is, a scientist by the name of Tom Osterkamp. He was involved with studying the permafrost in Alaska. Dr. Osterkamp drilled a deep borehole in the ground to measure temperatures at different depths. He found that the permafrost, under the tundra, was warming up. In just a few years of measurements he observed that the ground was changing shape. Some of the ground was sinking and forming pits. He began to ask questions about the snow becoming thicker in these pits and wondered if the snow could be warming the ground naturally.
You can see that some of the ground is sinking and becoming more wet, like this section that Rosvel is standing in.
He began to form hypotheses from his observations and started sharing this information with other scientists. By 2004, scientists from the University of Florida became interested and began designing experiments to measure CO2 moving between the ground and the air. He figured that the plants on the tundra might be taking in CO2 from the air but that if the permafrost continues to warm, the microbes in the once frozen ground will become more active and release more CO2 than the plants can keep up with. So three sites were set up, one in an area where the ground had a lot of sinking, one where there seemed to be a little sinking, and one where there was no signs of sinking. This is why the area is referred to as the gradient.
These are some of the first CO2 experiments placed in this area.
At this point the first observations had been made, which led to some very focused questions and hypotheses. Experiments were designed with materials and procedures and a plan to measure the CO2 balance. All that was left was to collect data and continue making observations. Then results could be looked at and analyzed, leading to conclusions that would begin to answer the original questions. And don't forget, there will be more questions to answer!
Christian has resently earned his Masters Degree for the work he has done on Carbon Balance.
This is the scientific method at its finest! No one really knows the answers, but more and more people understand that the questions are important. As the data comes in the answers will begin to form and let us know weather the hypotheses are supported or not. But either way, we will gain insight to the natural and man-made systems in progress that are contributing to climate change, and we will have a more focused direction to look further.