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It's Magic "C'est magique!", ("It's magic!") is what JB, one of our researchers likes to say, and there couldn't be a more perfect phrase to describe the chemistry of our team. When you're thrown into a mix of strangers, it's hard to gauge how things might go and simply put, I lucked out. Our

Talk of the Town "There was no sea ice this year" or "we only had two weeks of sea ice" is how most first conversations with locals have begun since I've been here. It's inconceivable how important this is unless you live in a subsistence community. So much of life's rhythms here rely on the ebb

It has been a busy week in the field! We have started the pluck. The pluck. Our team has been preparing for this but I really had no idea the complexity of the actual "pluck." The first step to the infamous pluck is to go to the field and take a quadrat of earth. This is done with a "butter" knife

Looking for chicks Another element of the team's research focuses on productivity counts at another cliff site. This one is called Kiveepuk and counts are done weekly. So how does that work? Just start counting. Find the right cliff site and the correct rocky outcrop. Then find solid footing at

Dynamic and Changing Arctic It's been said that there's no place on this Earth of ours where we can observe atmospheric, oceanic, and ecological changes more dramatically than in the Arctic. There's a phrase for it: "the polar amplification effect". Exponential increases in temperature have

I honestly can’t believe I leave for Alaska in a week – there’s so much left to do! I’ll post a couple more times before I head out (what do you want to know about? Is my gear interesting?), but for this post, I figured I’d give a primer on permafrost. When I started work on our exhibit I had heard

One of the amazing things (there are many!) about being at Toolik is that there are several projects happening here during the summer. The field site is packed with teams of researchers, their graduate and undergraduate students, and a steady hum of scientific conversations (as well as the

Sunday Night at the Community Center It was just after 10pm. The sun was still bright, and locals were starting to trickle in to the community center. Some finished their texting outside the door, while others beelined for the communal coffee pot in the corner of the gathering hall. It was all

Gifts From Whale* Beachcombing on St. Lawrence Island is almost like opening a time capsule, with layers of stories niggling into your mind. How long has this been here? Where did this come from? Who created this? One of the most impressive sights for me was this bowhead whale. Killed this past