Tundra Tour, Toolik Talk

Today, Gus finished some of his LTER responsibilities early and had a little extra time. As a result, we were able to take a walking tour of the nearby tundra and get an introduction to some of the experiments that Gus and others have established over the years. We had already heard about his plastic tent warming studies and the many nutrient additions studies that have been initiated in dry heath and wet sedge tundra ecosystems. Some of these have been maintained for 20 years or more.

 

Our tour today touched on several other unique studies like those that use small plastic polygons or "ITEX chambers" to increase air and, to a lesser extent, soil temperatures around different plant communities. There is an international effort to deploy these ITEX chambers and Jeff Welker, Steve Oberbauer, Craig Tweedie and their colleagues have deployed a number of these at Toolik Lake, Barrow, and elsewhere.  We also viewed several snow fences that have been built in the area to examine increased snow cover and interactions among snow depth, soil temperature, permafrost thaw, and vegetation dynamics.

 

Lastly, Gus showed us structures that he and his students have built over the years to shade plants. The goal is to examine light levels and assess plant productivity across a range of light exposures. One might think that plant growth and biomass production would decline at low light levels, but apparently significant reductions in light can be tolerated by Arctic vegetation with little to no loss of productivity. The pivotal point here turns out not to be light per se, but instead the proportion of light coming as direct versus diffuse radiation. Plants are pretty efficient in using diffuse radiation for photosynthesis and biomass growth, so there is not a direct correlation between shade treatments and biomass growth.

 

 

Science on the tundra

There is no shortage of science being conducted on the lakes, streams, and terrestrial ecosystems that surround Toolik Lake. That was obvious in the presentations this morning and reinforced in our series of site visits this afternoon.

Two field tours were planned. The first involved a short walk along wooden boardwalk near the upper reach of Toolik Lake itself and then up a short slope to a dry heath location. It is here that Gus Shaver spent 30 minutes or so talking about the geologic history of the area. There is a strong interaction between geology, topography, climate, and the types of vegetation found in this area. It was emphasized that the bedrock geology of the North Slope is complex. Toolik lake is within the Kuparuk River drainage. There are no glaciers in the Kuparuk drainage due to Atigun Gorge that separates this area from the mountains of the Brooks range. All water that discharges from the Kuparuk comes from snow fall and precipitation.

 

 

Gus brought along a couple of tile probes so people could push them into the soil and determine depth of the active layer. This early in the season, the active layer was found to be only a few centimeters thick. Seeing is believing so we dug a small pit and removed the a portion of the tussock tundra. An organic layer was present and, as suggested by the tile probe, was very shallow and underlaid by ice and frozen soil.

Gus then took us a short distance to see the plastic greenhouses that he is widely known for having built to warm tundra vegetation more than 20 years ago. He and his colleagues have drawn many conclusions from these studies, including the fact that warming causes an increase in shrub productivity. Such results confirm what many have suggested is a greening of the Arctic and an increase in shrubiness of the tundra that has been seen over the last 50 years in Alaska and elsewhere.

 

Having seen experiments being conducted in terrestrial ecosystems we jumped in a couple of vans and headed just north of Toolik Lake to the Kuparuk River. Construction along the Dalton Highway slowed our progress, but we did make it to our destination within an hour. There ,we heard about a phosphorus fertilization study that had been conducted on the Kuparuk River beginning in 1983. A pretty ambitious study that has now been going in one form or another ever since. Breck Bowden and his colleagues reported that phosphorus additions had affected a number of important processes over the years; productivity, nutrient cycling, and bryophytes and insect community structure. There were implications of these changes for fish populations. Questions of food web dynamics were raised and an interesting discussion followed.

 

Tomorrow Gus will take Rich and me to a few other sites where he has established experimental studies in the past. There are also small-scale warming studies being conducted in the area using the ITEX chamber design and I would like to see those up close. There are ITEX chambers in Barrow, but plant communities are so different between the two locations that I'd like to see those chambers in action here where the abundance of shrubs is higher.

 

Toolik Lake...

Scientists from around the world know the significant role that the Toolik Lake Field Station has played in the study of Arctic ecosystems. Research began here in 1975 with Toolik Lake formally joining the Long-term Ecological Research (LTER) network in 1987. There are many LTER stations in the United States; two LTER sites are located in Alaska with the second site located outside Fairbanks. The overarching goal of the Arctic LTER on the North Slope is to gain a predictive understanding of land, streams, lakes and their many interactions. More recently this has involved investigations that target controls on terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems by physical, climatic, and biotic factors.

 

 

Rich and I arrived at Toolik Lake last night and immediately received a safety and operations briefing by the station camp co-manager. We were assigned lodging for the three nights that we will be here. We will occupy Tan Dome #6 which sleeps six. These are simple Weatherport structures that can be easily set-up and moved between locations (e.g., remote deployments). There are many of these wooden floor tents at Toolik Lake, along with a few conventional trailer-style dormitories. In picking a roommate it helps to know who snores. Fortunately it was pretty quiet last night.

 

 

In addition to housing there are a number of other supporting facilities at Toolik Lake. For example, shipping and receiving, maintenance, computing and data services, community meeting space, bathrooms and showers, a helicopter landing zone, and a dining hall. The dining hall offers around the clock food service, as well as a gathering space for scientists throughout the day. If breakfast this morning is any example of the interactions that occur among faculty and students, life and scientific exchange of information at Toolik Lake is an exciting one.

 

 

Gus Shaver and others are giving us a great overview of research being conducted at Toolik Lake. Long-term observations and experiments abound; Gus and his colleagues have invested time and energy in setting up ecosystem warming and nitrogen fertilization studies. We will visit some of those experiments after lunch today. It will be great to have this background information as Gus accompanies Rich and me to our NGEE Arctic sites in Barrow later in the week.

Down the Dalton Highway...

The mid-afternoon flight from Anchorage to Deadhorse was, from my perspective, an outstanding flight. I was fortunate to have a window seat. I learned several years ago that a good way to witness ecosystem diversity in the Arctic is to first see it transition before your eyes. The boreal black spruce forest that surrounds much of Anchorage and Fairbanks gave way to open shrub lands. We went up and over the Brooks range, and then onto the ice-rich tundra as we neared the town of Deadhorse. Much of the later stages of the flight paralleled the Alaskan pipeline. Surprisingly, despite traversing more than 600 miles of wild Alaska landscape, the flight took only 90 minutes.

 

 

Molly, from the Toolik Lake Field Research Station, picked five of us up at the airport. Luggage was packed, snacks were distributed, and we headed south on the Dalton Highway. The van bounced along the largely gravel road for roughly 130 miles. Molly has worked at Toolik Lake for 3 years and knew the road well. We passed various sign posts that I had read about; Franklin Bluff, Happy Valley, Imnavait Creek, and finally after three hours, Toolik Lake. In that time we saw several red foxes, a dozen muskox, and several hundred Caribou. We also drove alongside the Alaska pipeline at several spots along the way. It helped that Rich brought along his copy of a just published "Land of Extremes" book that serves as a natural history of the North Slope. It also helped that one of the co-authors, Alex Huryn, was in the back seat of our van. John Hobbie, the other co-author is staying in the Weatherport tent with Rich and I at Toolik Lake.

 

 

Among Arctic scientists the Toolik Lake Field Station is legendary. This is where many, many scientists and their students have pursued their careers. Toolik Lake is managed by the Institute of Arctic Biology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The terrestrial ecosystems here are classified as dry heath and wet sedge tundra with enough topography to have streams, larger rivers, and lakes. All are studied in one way or another by hundreds of scientists each year. We will learn more about the research conducted here over the next few days.

 

 

Anchorage today, Toolik Lake tomorrow...

Rich and I arrived in Anchorage last night just after mid-night. It was an uneventful flight from Knoxville to Minneapolis and then to our first stop in Alaska. Rich and I both commented that although it was dark when we left the Twin Cities, it got progressively lighter as we flew north. Anchorage was bathed in dim sunlight at the time we landed...

 

I woke early and went for a run along one of Anchorage's many greenways. I was warned to keep an eye open for moose, but didn't see one. It was, nonetheless, a beautiful morning with temperatures in the high sixties at 6:00am and a predicted high of 85F for the day. We were told that temperatures this high were unusual for this time of the year.

Rich and I walked to a near-by sporting goods store to pick up a few last minute items, including mosquito spray. We were told that although it would get progressively cooler as we traveled north, the mosquitoes were bound to be active by the time we arrived in Toolik Lake. Better safe than sorry!

We are now at the airport waiting for our flight to Prudhoe Bay. There, Rich and I will catch a shuttle to Toolik Lake where we will stay until Thursday. My understanding is that the drive down the Dalton Highway to Toolik Lake from Phudhoe Bay is spectacular so looking forward to that.

 

Time to travel...

Almost two months ago, I traveled to Alaska with ORNL's David Graham and other scientists from UAF and LBNL to collect permafrost cores from the Barrow Environmental Observatory (BEO). That was a very successful trip thanks to good weather and even better planning that allowed us to acquire more than 30 quality cores. For those of you who don't know, the BEO is a 7,450 acre research reserve outside of Barrow, Alaska and it is there that the DOE-sponsored NGEE Arctic project is conducting research to understand the many facets of climate change in the Arctic and to incorporate acquired knowledge into climate models. We are entering the second year of our studies having established our first research site on the North Slope of Alaska.

This afternoon, Rich Norby and I left Knoxville on a sunny Father's Day for Anchorage where we will embark on a two week trip that will take us to Toolik Lake in Interior Alaska; to Barrow; and to Nome on the Seward Peninsula. Our research objectives at each of these destinations are different and I'll be sharing those with you as the days progress.

This trip, unlike previous visits to Alaska, will introduce us to areas of the state that we have either not seen before, like Toolik Lake and the Brooks Range, or will allow us to expand our experience in areas that we have visited before, but not explored in any depth. For example,  we visited Nome and Council on the Seward Peninsula in August 2011 during a site selection trip as our team prepared for Phase 1 activities for the NGEE Arctic project. This trip we will stay in Nome, but rather than revisit Council, we will explore potential field sites along the road that leads out of town to Kougarok via the Taylor road. Our Chief Scientist, Larry Hinzman, has worked along this road before and we are anxious to see this area ourselves. These may be sites that we want to consider for Phase 2 activities for our project. Time and discussions within our team and with sponsors at DOE will decide future directions.

First things first, however; a safe trip to Anchorage, a flight to Prudhoe Bay, and then a pre-arranged shuttle to Toolik Lake on Monday evening.

 

1,2,3,4...

Keeping hundreds of samples organized isn't trivial.  Many groups are using barcodes to aid sample tracking, and based on trials last year we're also fully embracing barcodes for 2013.