3 July 2008 Tweaking for Tussocks

Polar Date July 3, 2008

Hurray – the weather cleared up.  Toolik Lake was bathed in abundant sunshine after a few days of complete overcast.  It’s silly to expect the weather to be beautiful everyday, silly and unrealistic, certainly when the station is above the Arctic Circle.  But summer is summer and so the expectation, although unrealistic is present nonetheless.  

Looking toward the Brooks Range on a bright and breezy day. The tundra blooms with a diversity of life, including the white crowned sparrows that recently fledged and flit amoung the betula.

I got a late start today – I overslept.  Normally when my roommate’s alarm clock goes off the first time, I wake up and lay there and wait for the second alarm to go off, then I practice opening my eyes and by the third alarm I’m pretty well on the way to waking up.  Today, though, the alarm clock went off only once, and I never got to the part where I practice opening my eyes – end result, I woke up at 9:20.  One unexcused tardy for me, no breakfast, just a quick cup of coffee grabbed and taken to Lab2.

After drinking the coffee, it was out to the boardwalks again to catch up with the tussock measuring crew, Elise and Matt.  I wanted to take some better pictures of the boardwalks and was lucky to encounter a Spermophilus parryii  (Arctic ground squirrel or Siksik) just outside of camp.

The siksik is so named because of the noise it makes when you surprise it. It sounds like it's scolding you, in a way, saying, "tsk tsk." This little one was on the boardwalk this morning and stood its ground when I slowly walked toward it, making its scolding noise the whole time.

Here’s a link to a journal written by an earlier PolarTrec teacher who writes about the Siksik research being done here at Toolik Lake. 

http://www.arcus.org/TREC/VBC/index.php?showtopic=2172

I found Matt and Elise in the same general area we sampled yesterday.  They were using the newly designed tussock-measuring device and it seemed everything was going much more smoothly than it did yesterday.  It’s important to make sure the measuring is accurate and is done the same way each time, so it takes a lot of patience to ensure good data.  

Definately an improvement over the last tussock measurer, this model has a fixed angle of 90 degrees, the level is firmly ducktaped to the top of the cross bar and the binder clips are better secured. These improvements make the organic/tussock measurements a pleasure for anyone who needs to measure tussocks of any size.

After the measuring, everyone returned to a nutritious lunch (halibut, mixed green salad and bacon/corn chowder) followed by an afternoon of data entry, discussion of projects and general administration, computer work. Dinner had a Greek theme – Spanakopita, Greek chicken with peppers and onions, rice pilaf, salad bar, mixed steamed vegetables and baklava for dessert.  I skipped the chicken, steamed veggies and baklava.

Signing off from Toolik Lake, and remember, "There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew”. ~Marshall McLuhan, 1964