Taking Down the Tram…

Last May the NGEE Arctic team designed, built, and assembled a 65-meter long tram on the Barrow Environmental Observatory (BEO). The tram consisted of supports, rails, and a motorized cart that carried energy and radiation sensors back and forth across the tundra every 3 hours. It has been operating all summer with few problems. The reliability of the tram is a testament to those who designed the system – Keith Lewin, Bryan Curtis, and Paul Cook. Nice job guys!

Today we set about taking down the rails, supports, and cart for the winter. Keith and Bryan are going to redesign a few things over the winter and add a sensor or two. This will require strengthening the overall infrastructure and reprogramming some of the software. Although this could be done in the field, it makes sense to remove everything now (as per our North Slope Borough (NSB) permit and other safety considerations) and reassemble the new and improved system in the spring before snowmelt.

So, first thing this morning we set about strategically removing clamps that held the rails, and the few nuts and bolts that held the vertical supports. This literally took less than an hour. It was a pretty impressive design with considerable thought given to how the tram could be quickly assembled, and dissembled, in harsh weather. The hardest part was transporting the 16 foot rails and upright supports back to our storage facilities in Barrow. Sleds made this bearable and once everything was strapped in place, John and Bryan could run them back to town in 30 minutes. Two trips were required to get everything safely transported and stored until next spring.

Everyone was glad to have this completed before the end of the day. The winds kicked up to 20 miles per hour this afternoon and the wind chills dropped below -10F. Wind speeds are forecast to increase overnight and into tomorrow so this was a task we were glad to check off our list.

Quality Carbon Cycle Measurements Continue…

The NGEE Arctic team is committed to collecting quality datasets that can, in turn, provide knowledge to inform climate models. We are doing this for several disciplines including hydrology, biogeochemistry, and vegetation dynamics. One area where we are especially focused is on the measurement CO² and CH⁴ flux from polygonal landscapes on the North Slope of Alaska. These two greenhouse gases, both products of thawing and degrading permafrost, are important inputs to the atmosphere that determine the rate and magnitude of future warming of the planet.

Today our team left the Building 142 staging area a few miles east of Barrow and traveled to our field site using snow machines.  John used a Topcon dGPS to identify locations for our measurements.  He will eventually locate 65 to 70 sites buried beneath 10 to 50 cm of snow, but today John focused on plots along the 65-meter long tram. PVC collars had been installed along the tram earlier in the year and project scientists have been measuring CO² and CH⁴ flux routinely throughout the year. Once identified, the collars were gently cleaned and an LGR system was used to measure fluxes per unit ground area over a few minute period. Ori and Naama were able to take all the measurements within a few hours of admittedly limited daylight. It was surprising that despite snow, frozen ground, and ice we were still able to measure positive, albeit low, fluxes for both CO² and CH⁴. It will take a few weeks to analyze the data but these final measurements should complete what has been a rewarding and successful 2014 field campaign.

John continues to locate other sites where we will conduct similar measurements tomorrow. We will also be collecting samples of air from stainless steel “gas wells” that had been previously inserted into the active layer.

Hit the Ground Running…

John and I woke up early (or at least it was still dark), had breakfast, and then organized everything that had been in storage. Several boxes of equipment had not yet arrived, so we also stopped by Northern Air Cargo (NAC) in hopes of locating them. We quickly found one, but will have to wait until tomorrow to retrieve the other. Bryan, Ori, and Keith arrived at the airport about 10:30am and we soon had everyone checked in, organized, equipped, and dressed for the field, thanks to our logistical provider UMIAQ.

Snow machines made getting to our research site quick and easy. Each year we receive a safety briefing on the proper use and operation of snow machines and today was no exception. However, that took less than 30 minutes and we were on our way just after lunch.  Bryan and Keith examined the tram and all it sensors. We will let it collect another day of data before beginning the disassembly.  John got the dGPS up and running and guided Ori and I to each of our locations where we will measure CO2 and CH4 flux using static chambers beginning tomorrow. Most of these were under snow so it took a few hours of careful excavation to get them ready to measure. Ori and Naama (arriving tonight) should be able to start measurements early tomorrow morning. This set of measurements will be the end of what has been a season-long effort to get estimates of CO2 and CH4 flux before snowmelt, throughout the summer, and now into the winter. This should be a great dataset of model development, validation, and for comparison against larger-scale estimates of carbon cycle processes with the eddy covariance system. More about that tomorrow…

Below Zero in Barrow...Back Again

The days are getting shorter and the temperatures are dropping, but the NGEE Arctic team is once again back in Barrow. John (LBNL) and I arrived on the evening flight and we will be joined by Bryan and Ori (LBNL) and Keith (BNL) tomorrow. We will be here for 10 days to collect end-of-season measurements of CO2 and CH4 flux and a few permafrost cores, and to disassemble the energy tram and its 65 meters of supports and rails. Naama (LBNL) will arrive on Tuesday and will help as we remove the eddy covariance system. Its sensors and data logger will be shipped back to Berkeley for maintenance and calibration.

We have allocated 10 days for our tasks and hopefully that will be sufficient. The days are short with sunrise at 10:30am and sunset at 4:30pm. So, 5.5 hours of sunlight. The temperatures are hovering right at zero with wind chills at -15F. Dressed properly that should not be a problem. While we wait for the others to arrive, John and I will get the snowmachines ready and with luck we can be at our field sites on the Barrow Environmental Observatory (BEO) just after lunch.

Join us this week as we carry out our research.  We should have lots of good pictures and updates on our studies. For now, I snapped a picture just as our plane departed Anchorage earlier this afternoon. Enjoy…

Snow Arrives in Barrow...

Although people from the NGEE Arctic project will be coming and going from Barrow throughout the month of September, I leave today on the evening flight for Tennessee. It has been a great trip, first to the Seward Peninsula and then to the North Slope of Alaska. We woke up this morning in Barrow to fresh snow, about an inch. We often comment that “summer” is 90 days in length at this high-latitude location. A quite look back on my notes and albedo records kindly provided by our colleagues at NOAA, suggest that bare ground first appeared this year on June 5 with a snow-free landscape maybe a week later; so just short of a 90 day summer. Hard to believe that biology, at least biology aboveground in the form of vegetation must complete its life cycle in this brief period. Just imagine the challenges of a plant root growing at the permafrost boundary or microbial communities releasing nitrogen through soil organic matter decomposition in this cold, often frozen environment!

As I pack for the trip home, I would like to thank everyone who made this a successful trip. The selection of a series of Phase 2 sites on the Seward Peninsula is a significant milestone for the project, one that will facilitate our modeling objectives into the future, as will the continued science being conducted on the Barrow Environmental Observatory. I would like to thank Cara Mousa who has helped post many of the blogs during this trip. She does a great job of supporting me and the project, and a real lifesaver when I am away from the office.

 

Also, not too many “Pics of the Week” but here are a few for your enjoyment.  David Graham (ORNL) contributed the photo of the lemming...thanks. And yes, they do play highschool football in Barrow. The season opener pitted the Barrow Whalers against the Homer Mariners. The playing field is easily within sight of the Arctic Ocean.

Be safe, be productive, and enjoy your science! 

 

NGEE Arctic Scientist Links Plot Scale and Satellite Scale Measurements of Soil Moisture…

Much of what the NGEE Arctic team does is directed at gaining fundamental knowledge of processes that control the water, energy, and carbon cycles in tundra ecosystems. This means that members of the team are in the field and laboratory gathering data and sharing that information with our modeling colleagues. We also have an interest in linking our field studies to larger scale information coming from satellites in what if often referred to as scaling. That is, how do small-scale measurements made in the field relate to larger scale properties and processes estimated from remote sensing platforms?

Go Iwahana, a postdoctoral researcher at the UAF International Arctic Research Center (IARC) is especially interested in this topic and has been working this week to install a network of soil moisture probes across the Barrow Environmental Observatory (BEO). These probes are commercially available and, once connected to a small data logger, can record information on soil temperature and moisture for months at a time. Go plans to use data from this network to evaluate relationships between plot-scale data and that coming from the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) satellite. The intended goal of SMAP is to provide global measurements of soil moisture and its freeze/thaw state. These measurements will be used to enhance understanding of processes that link the water, energy, and carbon cycles, and to extend the capabilities of weather and climate prediction models. SMAP is a directed mission of NASA (https://smap.jpl.nasa.gov/) and is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Living in Barrow…Herman House

A few people have asked what it’s like to live in Barrow. Being the northernmost city in the United States you can guess that it is different from life in the lower 48. However, we have great logistical support from UMIAQ and as a result we typically have everything we need including vehicles and housing. Our team, especially when we have large field campaigns, is usually distributed between 3 apartments in town; two apartments along Boxer Street and the Herman House. All of these locations are close to the gas station, grocery store, etc. This week Larry, Go, David, Baohua, Ziming, and I stayed at the Herman House; a two bedroom house that sleeps 8; nine if you count the futon in the living room. The two bedrooms have bunk beds and can get a little crowded. Everyone, however, seems to find a spot and can operate pretty effectively despite the close quarters. Internet connections are slow, so it helps that people are patient. It can get a little hectic when everyone returns from the field with boots and jackets, especially after a wet day of research like yesterday, drying in various rooms throughout the house. We have a nice kitchen where we can prepare meals and even a washer and dryer. Most people are finding that thanks to these resources, research trips to Barrow can be enjoyable and everyone seems to like the comradery.