Verity goes North: 2014

This summer has been particularly rainy and damp here in AK which means the mushrooms and lichen have made a beautiful showing. I am not much good at identifying them unfortunately but I have had a lot of fun snapping their photographs. Lots of muddy knees!

Little yellow mushroom NE of the intersection of the Toklat River and the Denali Park Road

Curly edged mushroom found near the Toklat River in Denali NP

Bright orange goo? Found in Denali NP near Kantishna.
This little guy was growing on a dead Alder stem in a steep water track.

Puffballs! Near Kantishna

Little dark brown onion-capped mushrooms growing in a gravel bed near Kantishna

These were by far my favorite mushrooms I found this summer. They had inky black borders that seems to uncurl as they developed. Really beautiful and quite morbid! I found them in Kantishna.

If Tim Burton was to design a mushroom, I think he come up with something like this.

Light Brown onion-capped mushrooms found in Healy, AK

Boreal forest understory mushroom #1, complete with lots of Pleurozium moss (Healy, AK)

Boreal forest understory mushroom #2, complete with Pleurozium moss and Vaccinium vitis-idaea (Healy, AK)

Peachy colored mushroom near Polychrome Pass in Denali NP

I found a HUGE bunch of these Amananita muscaria mushrooms near Stampede Rd in Healy, AK

Each of these caps was bigger a dinner plate!

Amanita gills

Super spongy Bolete! Off Stampede Rd in Healy, AK.

Rotten tundra toadstool

Tundra Lichen #1

Tundra Lichen #2

Tundra Lichen #3

Tiny little mushroom growing in a patch of leafy liverworts (Anastrophyllum for the liverwort genus perhaps?) Found near Eight Mile Lake in Healy, AK.

Double-decker mushrooms. No idea what either species is. Found near Savage Campground in Denali NP

Buttonhole mushrooms (Savage River, Denali NP)

Towering mushroom gills! Found in Healy, AK

Lichen found on rocks in the bed of the Savage River in Denali NP

This year my field season got a bit later start than usual; I showed up at the peak of summer instead of when spring was just getting going! It was great to be greeted by lots of green plants and sunshine!

Boardwalk across the tundra out to one of our warming fences with the Alaska Range in the background

Home sweet home! This is the cabin we live in here in Healy.

When there are lots of folks working at the site I like to sleep in my tent. That way I can abuse my snooze button with reckless abandon and not get yelled at by all my coworkers/cabin-mates.

Our crew! From left to right, Aaron, Marguerite, Justin and myself. Not pictured are Tom, Elaine, Patrick and Arianna. This photo was taken at the local diner (Rose's) where we frequently purchase milkshakes to settle bets made between ourselves. Bets are often placed on one's ability to predict the thaw depths in a given plot or know when a particular piece of equipment will fail.

Our well at Panguine Creek. When rain is plentiful we only have to get our drinking water here since we use rain water for dishwashing and cleaning. Once the rain barrel runs dry, however, we come here every 2-5 days to fill up our 5 gallon carboys.

Aaron injecting pure CO2 into one of our measurement chambers. We read the CO2 concentration in the chamber after this injection and use it to estimate the volume of our chamber when it sits on a given plot. Knowing the exact volumes for all of our flux chambers is important because volume is an integral part of converting the change in CO2 concentration we read on our gas analyzers the flux of CO2 into or out of the plants and soils that was responsible for the observed change in CO2 concentration. Ideal gas law (PV=nRT) in action!

Elaine making radiocarbon measurements. These isotopic measurements are used to estimate the age of the carbon that is being released into the atmosphere in the form of CO2.

Autochamber moving day! These autochambers open and close themselves many times a day for continuous monitoring of CO2 exchange between plants, soils, and the atmosphere. Here Marguerite and Aaron are placing the autochamber on a new plot. We rotate the autochambers around all of our plots every 3-7 days. The blue tubing you see pipes gas from the closed chamber to a gas analzer at the site.

Last year was an exceptional year for Eriophorum inflorescence's (flowers). We are seeing lots of these little seedlings on the tundra this year! I found this one on a bare patch of soil near one of our boardwalks at the site. The dark spot at its base is the see capsule that is still attached. I might be the only person who finds these little guys adorable.

Another seedling that looks particularly spider-y

This year's puppies are almost full grown already! Don't worry, they are still pretty cute. Unfortunately they are also already learning the art of mischief: about ten seconds after this picture was taken one of them ran away with my camera case and I had to spend twenty minutes searching the woods to retrieve it. The pups are Willow, Pirate, Lasso, Panda and Taiga.

Warm weather makes all the sled dogs look pretty hot and drowsy! Wake me up when the snow is back.

I would like to think my parents visited AK this summer just to see me, but I think they really just needed an excuse to book the tickets. At the end of July we stayed in Denali National Park for a long weekend. I managed to convince them to do some authentic Alaskan hiking (aka bushwhacking). They got the lively version of AK with plenty of mosquito bites, muddy hillslopes, eye-poking alders, and grey drizzle. Just lovely! Here they are paused on the path we eventually found (as my father would point out) so my mum can take photos of some flowers.

Cabin envy! This tiny little A-frame was tucked away in the hills near Talkeetna. I want to move in as soon as the mice move out.

Some fairly dramatic mosses growing in Talkeetna
(Hylocomium splendens I believe but I wouldn't bet a milkshake on it)

Mum and Dad at the park visitor center

This is the view from an abandoned miner's cabin my mum and I hiked to in Talkeetna. Before the land was incorporated into the National Park most of it was privately held mining claims. Behind the cabin I found the collapsed entrance to the mine. It was quite overgrown so sadly none of the pictures of the mine itself turned out!

Inside the abandoned cabin

Lichen!

When we left Talkeetna we had the good fortune of clear weather and were able to fly back to the park entrance rather than ride the bus out. Our little five-seat plane cast a pretty shadow on the fog below as we took off!