Polar Date June 27, 2008
The first day in camp started with a breakfast buffet. From the vast assortment of morning foods I chose blueberry pancakes (actually only 1), bacon, fresh fruit and coffee. After eating I went over to Lab2 to begin work and to meet my fellow scientists
The lab is located right next to the lake and has good proximity to the dining hall and the bathrooms. It's in an excellent location and has very interesting features inside also.
Dr. Donie Bret-Harte introduced me to her two graduate student interns, Elise Suronen and Matt Cahill. Elise is from Oakland, CA and Matt is from Craftsbury Common, VT. Both are very enthusiastic, friendly and fun. Over the course of this journal you will get to know more about them. They headed out to the study plots to begin the flower counting which will last all day.
Dr. Bret-Harte and I sat down with a calendar to begin preliminary planning for the time I will be here. She is extremely busy, not only with managing the scheduling of data collection, but taking care of logistics for people that need to assist with collecting data, and tending to her role as an administrator for Toolik Field Research Station (TFRS). I had no idea a research scientist had so many different roles to play.
After deciding on a basic framework for my work here Dr. Bret-Harte took me on a tour of the study plots. Wow, it’s really hard to negotiate the boardwalks that run through the study plots! I felt like my feet were gigantic in the ExtraTuff rubber boots and the boards can be warped or missing so it made for a precarious walk to say the least.
Most of the boardwalks are6 x8planks, although some are narrow 2x4's placed next to each other and some are 4x6's placed next to each other. Regardless, they are really hard to walk on in clunky rubber boots. Like anything else, though, practice makes perfect (or at least better) and I got better at it. Most of the grad students and P.I.'s (principal investigators) walk along the boardwalks like they are on a normal surface.
On top of that, I learned so much that my head was spinning and my little notebook was filling up quickly. Here’s a brief recap:
• The study plots are set up to measure plant reactions to warming and to nutrient increase. • The presence of permafrost creates a shallow active layer of soil. • The wet sedge plots have few shrubs and deeper organic matter with 8-13 species in the plot. • Nitrogen isotopes are added to some of the study plots to see how the rate of nitrogen affects plant production. • Weather stations are located throughout the study plots to measure temperature, humidity and light intensity. • Fertilized plots (those with increased nitrogen) were more brown and taller, with Shrubs (primarily betual nana or dwarf birch) are larger and more conspicuous • The warming treatment (a translucent plastic sheet is tented around the plot without added nitrogen had no noticeable differences in the plants. • The warming and fertilized treatment plants were dominated by birch that was growing very vigorously to the almost complete exclusion of the sedges.
There are many different treatment plots. This picture looks into a greenhouse structure that provides the plants with increased warmth, without fertilizer. The other factors such as light and humidity are the same as those plants growing outside the structure. The plants within this greenhouse were very vigorous and there were no birch growing in with them. This contrasts with the treatment that had fertilizer - the birch had completely overtaken the sedge and were actually bulging out of the greenhouse.
There’s so much more, but I had reached saturation point – I don’t want to burn out on the first day! The remainder of the day was spent with lunch (grilled cheese and really yummy tomato/basil soup) and working on PolarTrec uploads. Dinner was skipped and bedtime came early. This four-hour time difference is hard to adjust to!
Signing off from Toolik Lake, and remember, "There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew”. ~Marshall McLuhan, 1964