The good news is that I was working in the field with Cathy,
Go, Andy, and Tristan by noon. When I arrived at our sites on the BEO, Cathy
and Go were tracing a network of troughs across the tundra. These will be the
preferential paths for lateral flow of water once snowmelt occurs.
I also had the opportunity to quickly look into the
newly-built tram system that was installed just last month by Bryan, Keith, and
Paul. These three did an excellent job of getting the tram bases and support
rails constructed prior to snowmelt, and the instrument package initially
tested. The sensors will all be used to gather data on energy balance along the
60-m transect and other periodic measurements will be collected to evaluate
carbon cycle processes and soil moisture patterns throughout the season. There
are already patches of vegetation along the transect, so these changes should
be increasingly captured by our measurements. Our modelers expressed an
interest in the spatial and temporal data for the design and evaluation of
their fine-scale models. It should be interesting to track insights that come
from this system in the coming months.
