Down to Business

Here at Toolik, we are serious about our work. Scientists come here to conduct research on every kind of life that exists in the arctic. The one that I have the privilege of working for is Dr. Laura Gough, a plant ecologist who also teaches at UTA. She has not arrived yet, but a collection of her collaborators and students are here and we are busy as ever. In addition to maintaining the experiments already in place, it seems like there is a new one to work on every day!

Lab 2, shared between 10-15 people working on "LTER" (long term ecological research)

Our field truck. All of the vehicles here have at least one extra gas tank.

Jake, Shannon, & Matt heading out to one of the field sites. We had to park the truck and hike because of large snow drifts.

If you wore your rubber boots, no problem! I had hiking boots and gaiters, so I jumped across.

When the going gets tough...  (Matt had wet feet after this). If you click the image to zoom in you can see one of the tripods in the background. This unit collects temperature data, records bird songs, and takes pictures of snowmelt.

This is Shannon using a very expensive (over $30,000) machine to detect the "greening" of the tundra. We have specific plots set up at our field sites that we will be taking weekly measurements from.

More hi-tech gear! The solar-powered contraption is called a "mantis," and it takes measurements similar to Shannon's backpack. The hexagonal structures help accelerate the thawing of the tundra. This may help us get an idea of the effects of global climate change.

Jake and Jesse doing a "sweep-net" procedure to collect insects off of the tundra. We are especially interested in how the insects, birds, and plants interact.

This pvc pipe has "i-buttons" attached to it. These water-resistant sensors record the temperature every hour. At the end of the summer, we will take them down and use the data in our reports.

We never go anywhere in the field without bear spray!

This is a very brief view of the kinds of things we are doing. I will be posting more details about the experiments as soon as I get a chance!