Permafrost: "permanently" frozen soil...year round.
Imagine digging a hole, you move past the active layer of the soil and then crunch: no forward progress, no matter how hard you push, no matter the force of your foot on the spade the hole will not advance. Welcome to permafrost. I was just reading about this mysterious soil and had no idea that 24% of the land in the Northern Hemisphere consisted of permafrost, and that to be classified as permafrost, the soil had to be below freezing for at least two years. I am boggled at the science behind this enigmatic soil, and feel so lucky to have been able to enter into the world of permafrost, literally.
Signs were found thjroughout the permafrost tunnel to help intrepid explorers learn about the science found within.
Today our training group was able to tour the CRREL(Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory), in a word fascinating. First excavated in the 1960's this frozen lab has been revealing its secrets for over fifty years. Visualize tunneling in frozen ground with artifacts from over 40,000 years ago. Picture plant roots, perfectly preserved in time, giving scientists a glimpse into a period long past.
Thousands of years old roots dangled down as we traversed the permafrost tunnel
Booted feet clomped along a metal grid, protecting the the fragile ecosystem from our steps yet even still, everything in the tunnel is covered with the fine Loess deposited over 30,000 years ago. Imagine walking in historic powder, well not literally powder, but this wind blown fine sediment reminds me of the fragility of life, for it was the "Loess" that covered mastodons and preserved them so wonderfully for present day humans to explore today in the CRREL permafrost laboratory.
To learn more, please check out the link: http://permafrosttunnel.crrel.usace.army.mil/ and you too can virtually experience the magic of a freezing tunnel giving the present a view into the past.
Can you figure out to which species this vertebrae belongs?
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