Everyone Knows Their Job

Having now been in Barrow for a few days, each member of our team has fallen into a routine of field measurements or has at least narrowed the scope of activities that need to be completed. There are individuals and/or small teams scattered across the tundra doing everything from hydrology to site establishment. Our corner of the Barrow Environmental Observatory (BEO) is a hotbed of research right now and that looks to continue for the next 10 days as we will soon be joined by Susan Hubbard (LBNL) and her team. That will bring our number to 9 people.

But I'm getting ahead of myself...

Today, while Cathy and Sasha were busy installing water sampling wells (that will be the focus of an upcoming post), Anna has taken the opportunity to evaluate an automated snow depth probe that she brought with her from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The probe itself is a long slender rod that is equipped with a sliding base plate. As the rod is inserted to the base of the snow layer, a sensor detects the depth with centimeter resolution. The sensor is connected to a data logger so that data points can be quickly saved. There is an additional button that, when pushed, logs the location of each measurement via a high-resolution GPS unit that Anna wears on her back. This series of steps is repeated across a 75 x 75 m core plot within our measurement areas. She has logged well over 4000 points in the last 2 days. Spatial maps of snow depth complemented by LiDAR imagery and topography will be pretty amazing.

My job of laying trail mat has been a daily activity since we arrived in Barrow. We want to protect the fragile tundra from foot traffic and trail mat is one way to do that. You can imagine that walking directly on the tundra would damage vegetation and soils so trail mat will confine our steps to specific protected areas.

Several days ago I posted a few pictures of the transport of trail mat to our field site using a sled towed behind a snow machine. This has worked surprisingly well. We can haul upwards to 225 individual mats on a single sled. We off-load those at one or more locations and then use a smaller sled to move mats to specific areas. My technique for placing trail mat in long straight paths is better than it was a few days ago.

I should be done installing trail mat tomorrow and can then turn my attention to helping others. The geophysical survey group from LBNL and UAF arrive tonight. It will be good to see them in action. We had a similar field geophysical campaign last fall and have had several good publications drafted from those studies already. Anna and Sasha will continue to install water wells and I will highlight pictures of those activities later in the week.

First NGEE Geophysical Winter Campaign

The NGEE geophysical team is on the way to Barrow for its first ‘winter campaign’.  Last September, the team  conducted its first ‘active layer characterization campaign’, which  included acquisition of a variety of geophysical and point measurements along a permafrost gradient where lidar data were also available. Analysis of the datasets, individually and in combination, revealed the utility of the methods for characterizing critical active layer and land-surface properties and their relationships; results were presented at the EGU meeting in Vienna two weeks ago.

Team (standing in the Arctic Ocean) from left to right:
Stan Wullschleger (ORNL), Baptiste Dafflon (LBNL),
Craig Ulrich (LBNL), Susan Hubbard (LBNL),
John Peterson (LBNL)and Alessio Gusmeroli (UAF), Sept 2011. For this May
campaign, Jonathan Ajo-Franklin (LBNL) will also join us.

First Geophysical Field Campaign

The objectives of this campaign are threefold: (1) to characterize the ground ice beneath the active layer at the same location as the previous campaign; (2) to test a new seismic methodology for quantifying ground ice characteristics; and (3) to collect a variety of geophysical data in a nearby area to provide a foundation for other measurements that will be made by other NGEE groups during the upcoming growing season. 

We are excited to again be working in Barrow together again, worried about the instrumentation performance in this cold weather, and curious to explore the geophysical responses to the frozen ground. Stay tuned!

Plenty of daylight

Jet lag is just one cause of lost sleep when traveling across 4 time zones in a 16 hour period. So too is going to bed at midnight, knowing that the sun is still on the horizon and that daylength in the Arctic is about 21 hours. Either way, I woke up early, made myself a cup of coffee, and ventured out to begin moving trail mat to the tundra. It had snowed last night and the forecast was for light blowing snow and clouds. Temperatures hovered at zero.

As expected, and as arranged with UMIAQ, 8 or 9 pallets of GeoBlock were wrapped, stacked, and ready for transport. These plastic mats are right at a meter in length and arranged 96 per pallet. The mat itself is well deigned and can be placed end-to-end and connected with overlapping tabs and secured with screws.

Tony, from UMIAQ, made the first run of the day after he positioned trail mat on a wooden sled to be towed behind a snow machine. Having snowed last night, the weight of the trail mat tended to weigh the sled down, causing the runners to dig into the snow. It made for a slow pull out to the field site. However, once delivered, Larry and I were able to lay 100 meters of trail mat in about an hour. We both laid out walkways that had a slight curve despite a desire to lay trail mat in a straight line. Oh well, we will correct alignment later.

We also took time after lunch to look into lab space. UMIAQ has lab space available in the Barrow Arctic Science Center (BASC). We have several tasks this coming summer that require access to quality lab space; something that is at a premium in Barrow. As it turns out, a couple of labs are potentially available and we took an hour to look at a few spaces. These are really nice labs with all the standard features of a modern lab complete with eye wash stations, fire extinguishers, and safety showers. It is too early to tell, but we hope that similar space can be secured for our NGEE Arctic project.

Finally, as a complement to available lab space, we have been asking scientists who work in Barrow about common facilities like cold rooms, -80C freezers, and ovens. Ken Hinkel, from the University of Cincinnati, gave us a heads-up on a large upright oven that he has used for drying soils. I located the oven in one of the UMIAQ buildings. It looked well maintained and clean. I turned it on and adjusted the temperature to 70C. The oven worked great. While we may need to purchase a small oven for our use in a lab, this oven is going to be perfect for drying larger soil and plant samples later this summer. We thank Ken for sharing his resources.

We also made progress on installation of water sampling wells. Anna, Cathy, Alex, and Craig evaluated a few options this afternoon and are huddled around the table now deciding on a path forward.   Should be ready to go in the morning; early.

Planning Ahead, Getting the Job Done

Everyone who travels to Barrow as a participant in the NGEE Arctic project is expected to have done two things before their trip. The first is to have outlined a scope of work that can be traced to tasks in our proposal. It is critical that we know what needs to be done prior to our arrival in Barrow. Barrow is not the place to begin thinking about the science question you want to address. The second is to have a thoughtful and thorough work plan that identifies what must be accomplished and who needs to tackle specific tasks in order to deliver on expectations. Susan Hubbard and her LBNL geophysical science team set a good example for how this should be done last September, as did David Graham and his ORNL permafrost sampling team during a trip to Barrow just last month.

It is now my turn to put a work plan into action. It is my goal to spend the coming week laying out GeoBlock trail mat across our field plots on the Barrow Environmental Observatory (BEO). Our team had previously developed GIS overlays of the BEO and located our field plots across a series of low-, high-, and transitional polygons. Because the tundra is so sensitive to foot traffic, a network of boardwalks and trail mat are a good way (and probably the only way) to limit damage to tundra vegetation and to the surrounding landscape. This is an important component of our site establishment plans and these mats need to be installed prior to the arrival of our vegetation team in June.

The resolution of the aerial and remote-sensing images we are using in support of our site establishment activities is amazing. We have made especially good use of the high-resolution LiDAR images that were provided by Craig Tweedie from the University of Texas at El Paso. Craig and his students have conducted research for many years in the Barrow area. With help from Garrett Altmann at LANL, we have optimized the placement of these protective walkways, leveraging to the best of our abilities wooden boardwalks in the vicinity of our field plots. Although it will not be a trivial undertaking, we should be able to access each of our plots with the addition of 700 meters of new trail mat. Note the spatial detail provided by LiDAR images of low- and high-centered ice-wedge polygons in the area of our field plots. This is a great illustration of patterned ground in the Arctic.

We landed in Barrow at 7:35pm Alaska time, just a little more than 16 hours since I departed Knoxville this morning. Larry and Cathy picked us up at the airport, we gathered our luggage, and then headed off to our lodging for the week. Over the last 6 months, we have grown accustomed to Hut 163, a bunkhouse-style housing unit that sleeps 8 people. It has a small kitchen, a 250 gallon water tank that gets filled upon request, and a heating system that takes the chill off the 10F temperatures outside. Our NGEE Arctic home away from home...

And last, but not least, Craig and I verified that pallets of trail mat were ready to be moved out to our field plots tomorrow. I love it when a plan comes together.

Plenty of Time to Think

A 16 hour plane trip to Barrow, including layovers in Chicago, Anchorage, and Fairbanks, gives a scientist plenty of time to read and think. These are two of the hardest things to do in the office. I browsed my way through a stack of scientific journals and then turned my attention to a series of individual articles that I printed off prior to leaving the office yesterday evening. Other passengers around me had similar ways of passing the time; watching videos, reading, listening to music, and solving various types of word games and puzzles.

Passengers on airplanes seem to especially enjoy the challenge of solving Sodoku puzzles. My wife, Denise, can spend hours filling in these puzzles with a dizzying array of numbers 1 thru 9. She tells me that erasing is not allowed. It may take 10 to 15 minutes of serious concentration, but she more often than not declares victory, turns the page, and starts a new puzzle. I congratulate her and then usually go back to reading or thinking; sometimes I think with my eyes closed. Denise questions my true motives especially when thinking is accompanied by occasional snoring. I tell her that being a scientist is hard work!

Several hours into my flight from Chicago to Anchorage, I ran out of reading material and began rummaging through my backpack for other ways to occupy my time. In January, I received a package from the North Slope Borough School District and the Fred Ipalook Elementary School. That package contained an "ABC Book About Our Home in Barrow" that had been written and illustrated by students from Miss Jenn Wallace's third grade class. I had given a field tour to this class last September and enjoyed talking to them about climate and ecosystems around the world. I stayed in touch with this class over the winter. You can learn a lot about a town or village, like Barrow, through the eyes of its children.

Each page in this book contains a caption and picture for every letter in the alphabet. My understanding is that each student was assigned a letter and was thus responsible for that page of the book. They are obviously a creative group of students. The pages touch on everything from A as in "Arctic" fox which can be found on the tundra to Z as in the Arctic Ocean "zone" in which we live. In between comes N as in "nanuqs", a word from the native Inupiat language that refers to the polar bears that inhabit this region. A few other pages along with drawings from the kids are shown below.

Our team has a busy two weeks in Barrow. It would nice, however, to stop in and see this class again. I learned from their teacher that last week was the annual Science Fair at the Fred Ipalook Elementary School. I'd like to hear about some of the student projects. Maybe there is a budding scientist in the class?

Finally, there will be six of us this week in Barrow; Larry Hinzman (UAF) and Cathy Wilson (LANL) are already in Barrow now, having left Fairbanks earlier this morning. Anna Liljedahl and others from UAF, plus Craig Ulrich (LBNL) will arrive with me tonight. Larry tells me that, thanks to UMIAQ and to some strategic pre-trip planning, things are in place for a quick start when we begin our field work tomorrow.

Tundra Time

A quick check of the Weather Channel app on my BlackBerry shows a seasonally warm and sunny forecast today for Knoxville, TN. Temperatures near 90F with just enough humidity to remind us that summer is around the corner for east Tennessee and the Great Smoky Mountains.

That same Weather Channel app informs me that the forecast at my destination of Barrow, Alaska is 80F colder than Knoxville; and light snow currently falls across the North Slope. Sounds like it should be another great week as our NGEE Arctic team travels 330 miles north of the Arctic Circle!

If you are reading this blog for the first time, let me point out that the NGEE Arctic project is focused on better understanding high-latitude ecosystems for the purpose of improving climate prediction. Our team consists of scientists from across a range of disciplines and organizations. Participants in the NGEE Arctic project are from four of the Department of Energy national laboratories (ORNL, LANL, LBNL, and BNL) and the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The size and diversity of our team allows us to study and model complex surface and subsurface interactions that drive critical climate feedbacks in tundra ecosystems.

The scientific and technical breadth of our team gives us a unique capability to conduct integrated research in these complex, globally-important and sensitive ecosystems. Field and laboratory research in places like Barrow provides data that can then be used to develop and test models that will, in turn, enhance prediction of future climate. We have ecologists, hydrologists, geophysicists and others working with modelers to tackle this challenge.

Beginning today, various scientists involved in the NGEE Arctic project will be in Barrow until May 16th. Field activities will include laying out trail mat within sensitive areas of our research plots; installation of water sampling wells; and geophysical surveys. Other activities will prepare us for additional work in Barrow later in the summer. There will be plenty to keep our team busy in the next two weeks! UMIAQ will provide logistical support for our team just as they have during previous trips this year. Daily postings to our NGEE Arctic blog will highlight our many activities and provide a glimpse of our project as we conduct field research in the remote and interesting landscapes of the Arctic.

Leaf Area

We just finished servicing, calibrating and packing the LI-COR LI-3100C Area Meter for use in Barrow. Since the leaves on Arctic plants are considerably smaller than the leaves we usually measure we had to switch out the camera lens and sample guides to configure the instrument for a higher (0.1mm²) resolution.  Due to the remote location we have attempted to anticipate any maintenance issues and have included spare parts and a small tool kit.  The instrument will be a key part of the Vegetation Dynamics work as many of the parameters and processes we seek to understand need to be related to leaf area, including many key model inputs.