Rich, Victoria, Jenny, and I arrived in Nome yesterday
after a short flight from Anchorage. We gathered up our luggage, flagged down a
taxi, and made our way several miles out of town to housing that Rich had
arranged for us at "Dredge No. 7". The name echoes back to the gold
mining days of the early 1990's when miners would use mechanized dredges to
search for gold in the streams and small rivers around this area of the Seward
Peninsula. That gold rush continues today in the Horton Sound (Bering Sea) where
floating "dredges" literally vacuum gold from the sea floor. The
influx of modern-day miners is making it difficult to find housing in Nome.
We had traveled to Nome to work with colleagues from the
Oak Ridge National Laboratory and University of Alaska Fairbanks. Our goal was
to conduct a series of surveys across thermokarst formations, thaw slumps, and
much like we did in Barrow, drained thaw lake basins. We met up with Dan,
Santonu, and Guido shortly after breakfast and made our way out of town on the
Koukarok Road. This is one of three roads leading out of Nome. The road is
dotted with summer cabins and used mostly by bird watchers who frequent this
area throughout the season. It is also a favorite road for scientists like us
who want quick access to the tundra for studies in both continuous and
discontinuous permafrost ecosystems
Once transects were laid out, Santonu and Jenny collected
spectral signatures of several plots of different sizes using a back-pack
mounted ASD spectroradiometer. This instrument collects data across a wide
range of wavelengths and allows researchers to compare ground-based
measurements to remote imagery of the type collected by NASA satellites. By the
end of the day, Jenny and Santonu had worked out a good routine for capturing
spectral information; I look forward to seeing the data, especially how it
varies across species composition.
While Jenny and Santonu collected spectral data with the
ASD system, the rest of us gathered other kinds of data. Victoria determined
species composition for the various plots; Rich measured thaw depth, soil
temperature, and water content; and Dan and I clipped plots for standing
biomass. Guido has a long history of conducting research in drained lake basins
and wanted to know something about permafrost characteristics and depth of
organic matter. He worked hard to obtain one soil core from an upland location
and one from the basin itself. He used a SIPRE coring device and a hand-held
motor. We were able to extract an intact core down to 1.8 meters for the basin
area. This core was rich in peat throughout the entire length of the sample.
It was a good first day and we accomplished a lot. Given
the long drive out the Kougarok Road we were also able to see a lot of scenery
and wildlife; several moose and their calves; a Peregrine falcon and its nest;
fish for various kinds (including Grayling) as we crossed numerous bridges along
the road; and then a diversity of wild flowers.
