The NGEE Arctic team has been challenged this week to
complete all our tasks between sunrise and sunset. The short days, less than 5
hours, mean that we are spending another day collecting permafrost samples and
measuring CO2 and CH4 fluxes. We headed out to our field
sites today before sunrise thanks to good organization yesterday and UMIAQ
having the snow machines checked out and full of gasoline. The trip only took 30
minutes and just as the sun rose above the horizon, John had located our first
sampling location for the day. He also used the dGPS to locate a few
measurement sites for Ori. One of our goals in measuring the flux of greenhouse
gases from polygons on the North Slope of Alaska is to better understand the
role of spatial variability in CO2 and CH4 flux rates related
to hydrology, geochemistry, and vegetation. These are complex landscapes with a
diversity of low- and high-center polygons that dot this area of Arctic coastal
plain. So, our measurement sites, which easily total more than 100, are
distributed across center, rims, and troughs. These features are now frozen and
most are now covered with snow, but throughout much of the year these microtopographic
features present a wide range of soil and environmental conditions that
contribute to observed rates of greenhouse gas fluxes. Our team needs this
information to better understand what controls fluxes and how that knowledge
can then be used to improve climate predictions. We are collecting other data
from the permafrost cores under controlled laboratory conditions to evaluate
observations in the field. This multi-scale aspect is unique to our project and
provides an opportunity to draw connections between laboratory and field
estimates of flux. Ori and other colleagues on the project have literally
collected thousands of flux estimates in the field over the season. Once back
in the office these data will need to be analyzed and results interpreted. Once
analyzed the data nd resulting insights can be shared with the modelers on the
project for incorporation into their simulations.
