Final thoughts from the tundra...

The last two weeks have been both hectic and rewarding. Larry and I were able to successfully highlight the dynamic nature of Arctic ecosystems for our team of modelers and BER managers.  Upon their departure from Barrow, I was able to get a considerable amount of work accomplished. I collected soil water samples for a collaborator; worked with Bryan Curtis as he logged data using an NDVI sensor for plant cover and productivity; and transported trail mat for my colleagues who visit the field site in September.  I was also able to complete lots of other field, lab, and organizational duties as well. It proved to be a fun and productive week.

My visit ends this afternoon with a final meeting with our logistics provider...UMIAQ. They are in the midst of developing a 10-Year Master Plan for the Barrow Environmental Observatory (BEO) and are asking for input from scientists who either have or are actively working on the BEO. This should be a timely meeting as NGEE Arctic ramps up in the coming months.

Finally, Larry sent a great picture of our team standing atop a large permafrost degradation feature in Barrow. This area was the result of a disturbance several years ago, but it illustrates nicely the processes we are trying to study. On one hand, low-centered polygons represent healthy permafrost conditions; we saw many of these this week. On the other hand, degraded areas can form where permafrost has warmed. This warming can result in thawing of the permafrost and subsequently set up strong interactions with surface hydrology. Thermal erosion can quickly, in a matter of a few years to a decade, drive the formation of these degradation features. As you can see there is considerable subsidence in these areas, the soil dries, and you can get rapid mortality of tundra vegetation. Our NGEE Arctic project wants to understand the natural processes that might also lead to these "features of the future" and represent them in models. We believe this to be a major step towards better understanding critical landscape-scale feedbacks to climate in the Arctic.

Cheers...