Boundless summer

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!

Dad surveying the landscape

Mum doing the same

A beautiful braided riverbed in the sunshine

Lakes in some landscape dimples

Denali (Mt. McKinley) from the plane window

Denali Summit

Looking down the side of the mountain into the glacial valley below

Glacier (my apologies, forgot the name)

More glaciers! Can't get enough of 'em

Toasted gingerbread with frosting

Some really dramatic drainages alongside a glacier valley

New versus old glacial till

That's a wrap for now, I promise to post my photos from August soon!

2013 Recap

During last summer, my faithful camera died. I can't really blame it, after all it has traversed the Brooks Range, survived countless days in a backpack with miscellaneous field equipment, and been literally frozen solid. Needless to say, I have been pretty frustrated by the lack of pictures from my 2013 field season! Luckily I managed to scrape together a few shots with the help of a few borrowed cameras and Tom Lane. Tom is a Vermont high school teacher who worked with our lab group through PolarTrec; a program that gives teachers first hand experience with climate change research that introduces teachers to field research in polar regions. Tom made a great addition to our team last summer and got a lot of good photos that he has posted through the his journal on Polartrec's website.

Here our technician John is checking out the inner workings of one of our autochamber systems that measures carbon dioxide exchange between the plants, soil, and atmosphere. Photo credit Tom Lane

In this photo John and I are walking out to the warming experiment. Since this photo was taken we have installed some more boardwalks on this path so we spent a little less time tripping over tussocks this summer! Photo credit Tom Lane

Photo credit Tom Lane

2013 was a very good year for the sedge Eriophorum vaginatum. In July the tundra was covered in these white flowers! I love the way they bobble in the wind.

The view from our driveway east towards the town of Healy, AK. The white in the foreground is from all the Eriophorum flowers.

Home sweet home! We live on a cabin on Regulus so we get to pause here and admire the view on our way to the field every morning.

This is a section of a permafrost soil core that Jack and I collected in June 2013. Check out the frozen ice lens at the end! These samples were collected for a soil incubation experiment that I now have up and running in the lab in Gainesville, Florida. Since taking this picture I can tell you a whole lot about the chemistry of this particular chunk of soil.

Jack taking notes on the permafrost cores we collecting. You can see the engine we use for drilling into the permafrost laying on the tundra in the background. The things that look like burritos next to Jack are segments of a core that have been lifted up out of the hole as we drill deeper and deeper.

This little guy showed up to help drill permafrost!

This image is from one of the instruments we use regularly: the Tetracam. It is a specialized camera with filters for near-infrared and red wavelengths of light. Signals for these wavelengths are used to calculate the normal difference vegetation index (NDVI) for our plots every week. Indices like NDVI are useful because they can be used to relate processes that we monitor in our plots (carbon dioxide exchange, plant biomass, leaf senescence) to satellite images of much larger landscapes.

Shovel Week 2013

I spent this week in Healy, Alaska shoveling sow at our CiPEHR manipulative warming experiment (Carbon in Permafrost Experimental Heating Research). We use snow fences to build up large snowbanks that insulate the soil from cold winter air temperatures. This warming treatment raises soil temperatures by a few degrees in winter and increases thaw depth by a few centimeters in summer. The CiPEHR experiment was designed to inform our understanding of how high latitude systems will respond to climate change.

Unfortunately, the large snow banks that have built up all winter have gotta go before spring rolls around! If they were left in place they would increase the water inputs to our plots and shorten the growing season (because they take so long to melt out). 

Arriving at the experiment on snow machines

Only the tops of the snow fences were actually visible when we started

Shoveling and hauling snow off plot kept us busy for about 6 hours a day. 

This is the only picture of the process for two reasons (1) I was busy shoveling and (2) my camera kept freezing.

Lunch break! Mmm, frozen PB&J sandwiches 

Finally able to see the entire fence! They are 1.5 meters high

Dismantling the fences so a surprise spring snow storm doesn't undo all our hard work

Snow machine maintenance

Elizabeth digging into the snow to measure soil respiration rates

Victory!

Hey guys, where are you going without me?

The wall tent where I do most of my lab work in the summer is looking a little chilly right now

Elizabeth & sled dog pup!

My plots are out there somewhere under all that white stuff

View down the valley

Home sweet home! This is the spruce forest outside our cabin at sunset (10:30pm)

I am headed back to FL to finish up the semester but will be back in AK starting late May. Hopefully some of the snow will have melted by then!