Polar Date July 6, 2008
Another beautiful day arrived – I can’t say "dawned” because the sun never sets. It was, however shining intensely and the tent was hot. The plan for the day was to gather at the lab at 9:00 a.m. to begin processing the soil cores we had collected at the burn site. This would prove to be a fairly large task requiring extra hands, extra patience and extraordinary attention to detail. Lab 2 areas were readied in advance of the undertaking.
The soil people (Elise and I) along with some much welcomed help from Yu Wei and Matt collected 10 soil cores at each study plot, 1 every 10 meters. The lab area is readied for the big undertaking of processing the soil cores.
Protocol was reviewed carefully and we took our positions – Matt was going to do all the weighing and enter the data into the spreadsheet, Yu Wei, Dr. Ray, Elise and I were going to process and homogenize the cores, with Elise having the additional task of maintaining the filtering area. We all watched as Yu Wei took on the first core.
After the length of the core is verified and the weights of mineral and organic portions are obtained, the core is separated into 5parts as follows; mineral soil - coarse items such as rocks are removed. The remaining mineral is squished up like Playdoh and bagged. Both of the components are weighed again. The organic soil is separated into 3 parts: Surface litter, like green moss, leaves, twigs on the surface. Coarse matter, anything larger than 5 mm or something that can't be broken into teeny tiny pieces. Organic soil - the soil and teeny tiny roots that have to be mushed up and mashed together until there are no lumps and every bit is just like every other bit. This process is called homogenizing the soil. To homogenize means to make uniform or the same in consistency. All 3 of these organic soil components are weighed also.
Work progressed slowly at first. It took a few cores before our fingers learned how homogenized soil felt and how to quickly determine mineral layers, surface litter and coarse matter. Once the fingers learned though, we began picking up speed. After lunch, Laura Reynolds and her associate joined us in processing and Matt accumulated quite a collection of samples to be weighed.
After the soil cores have been processed, each portion of the core must be reweighed. All the weights from the inital core through the plucking and homogenization process are recorded on a spreadsheet. Matt Cahill did all the weighing and data entry for all the cores, an enormous effort and accomplishment. Great job, Matt!
You might be wondering what the soil types look like after they are done being homogenized. Here are some close ups:
Mineral soil was very much like clay - it was moldable and fun! The amount of mineral soil varied from none to close to half a soil core. The cores themselves varied between 8 cm and 20 cm. The cores were taken by pushing a soil corer down to the permafrost, extracting the core and then pushing the core out of the corer with a plunger-rod into a 1 gallon Ziplock bag. Plot name, transect location, total core length, length of mineral layer and length of organic layer along with depth of core hole were recorded on the Ziploack.
This is what the organic layer looks like after homogenization. It reminds me of something that you would find if you walked too closely behind a horse. Others on the team compared it to bear poop in terms of color, consistency and size. Ewwww!
Around 5:45 we finished the work, a bit sore from sitting and squeezing dirt, oops, I mean soil, all day. After washing up we went to a dinner of Chicken Cordon-Bleu, wild rice, salad, and green beans. I returned to the lab after dinner and worked until 10:30 catching up on PolarTrec work.
Signing off from Toolik Lake, and remember, "There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew”. ~Marshall McLuhan, 1964