Science, Plants, and Me

Part 1: Science

We have been working quite a lot the past two days, but sadly I don’t really have anything super interesting to report. The past two days have consisted of a lot of construction in order to set up one of our research sites. Sometimes, science involves some heavy duty tools… like jackhammers. The men below are attempting to get some rebar into some rocky and icy tundra soil.

 

Here in Toolik we have 2 transects that are 50 meters long by 2 meters wide that are being used for various measurements. Dr. Oberbauer and his crew have a trolley that runs across the transect on two cables: 

Within the “trolley” (above), we have various sensors that measure abiotic conditions as well as some vegetation characteristics. The green cord you see above is attached to a motor that pulls the trolley all along the transect. It’s pretty interesting. The vegetation below will eventually be identified by someone who loves plants, like me and Jenny. We have transects like this in Barrow and Atqasuk as well, so our team will be in charge of running the trolley at those locations for the summer. Hence the trip to Toolik to figure out what the heck we are doing! Our general tools are rulers and clickers… not spectrometers and sensors and dataloggers.

Jenny and I got to play with more high tech equipment when we measured fluorescence on some vegetation today. The machine we used was so old that it still contained a slot for a floppy disc. That gave us a good laugh. But, sometimes if the original works great, why change it? Still, I sometimes get confused and intimidated by this type of equipment… it’s written all over my face in the picture below:

Some people get to play with fun toys like kites for their research. Sergio from University of Texas at El Paso flies a kite with a camera attached to it to take pictures of the tundra from the sky!

 Now maybe you can see why we love science in the tundra so much. 🙂

Part 2: Plants

As you may or may not know, our research involves studying tundra plants. Because of this I have a new found interest in the little buggers. I end up taking more pictures of plants than I do of people a lot of the time. It is early in the season, so there aren’t many flowers out yet, but here are some plants we have seen around Toolik this week:

Part 3: Me

This last part is for all of you who always say I don’t post enough pictures of myself (…MOM!…cough, cough). So, here is a montage of me doing things in the Arctic, photos courtesy of Jenny Liebig: