Look At Me Still Talking When There’s Science To Do
In Grand Rapids… thinking about Barrow (among other things)Archive for caribou
So be good for goodness’s sake!
My sources say that when a little Atqasuk child is naughty his little Atqasuk grandmother will warn him that his punishment will be to come back as a caribou in his next life. Caribou are feasted on by mosquitoes in the summer and are forced to eat nasty lichens in the winter. No one wants to be a caribou.
Bad guy got run over by a caribou!
Merely saying that Jeremy and I were in the field for more than 27 of the 42 hours between Friday at 6 and Sunday at noon does not quite capture the enormity of what Team Efficiency accomplished this weekend. Add on travel time and prep time and one will quickly deduce that we didn’t really sleep more than five hours a night.
Exactly what we accomplished is as follows: wet site total season (marked individuals), dry site total season (marked individuals), wet site total season (largest reproductive), dry site total season (largest reproductive), leaf collection (three leaves times two species times twelve plots times two sites), other leaf collection (fifteen leaves times two species times six plots times two sites), specific leaf area index leaf collection (ten leaves for each species we study in Atqasuk), removal of soil probes, soil sampling for two different researchers, thaw depth on all 96 plots, OTC removal and disassembly, remarking the boardwalk, taking pictures of each plot, transplant growth measures, seed collection (one species from every plot), cleaning out and taking down the tent, staking and stringing the biomass plots, cleaning up the lab, packing away the equipment… oh yeah, and we started the marathon weekend with collecting phenology data, just like we always do.
I’ve spent nearly the whole ten weeks and never even explained that last bit! For each of the plots I have at the wet site (24 control and 24 with OTCs (open-topped chambers) I have a spreadsheet printed out with spaces to fill in the general status of the vegetation in the plot. As events happen in the plots I write down the date. We record information for each species both for the plot in general and also for three marked individuals of each species in the plots. For example, I observed that in experimental plot eight, Eriophorum angustifolium individual four had green leaf on J169, inflorescence on J169, open flower on J170, withered flower on J175, seed set on J188, and seed dispersal on J201. I did not observe leaf senescence for this individual, though there were Eangs in the total plot that were in this state on J228. Making these kinds of observations is easier when you only saw the plots every ten days or so (like we did), but it is clearly more accurate to check more often (like Rob and Jean did).
While everybody and their brother was seeing polar bear after polar bear in Barrow this weekend, Jeremy and I had to be content with the company of the reincarnation of Rob’s ground squirrel and a few pesky caribou, one of which nearly ran us over and seriously interfered with the science*. It was… charming?
We never would have succeeded in our race-against-time to hop a plane that didn’t know we were coming without the help of Wondrous Bob. Of course, without Wondrous Bob to add several things to our to-do list, we might also have been a bit less stressed.
It was a pleasant kind of stress, and we were pretty happy with ourselves and our accomplishments, like the hoity-toity researchers that we are. We were also happy that the airplane, which we made with twenty minutes to spare, did not reject us.
*Tripped on a string and broke a stick.
Could I BE wearing any more clothes?
I’ve been wearing matching socks for a whole six weeks now. Normally I have more important things to do than make sure that both socks I grab from my jumbly sock drawer are the same color or pattern (though I do try to match height and weight, for reasons of sensory symmetry). In Alaska my dedication to Earnest Science has prevailed, and I wear matching footwear.
The rest of my wardrobe tends to be rather more brightly colorful than that of my companions, as I am outfitted with yellow, periwinkle, and green while the rest of the team wears black, navy, or deep red. The crayon-print pajama pants and star-print hat in particular have earned comments, but my colleagues promise that they are not embarrassed to be seen with me…
In any case, (for me) gearing up for the field is usually a matter of deciding what three or four layers to put on- in order of how big they are and with no particular regard to color combinations. Today was no exception, though it was not the chilly Barrow field I was anticipating, but the less-than-24-hours Aqasuk trip that Jeremy and I were attempting. We were trying to go light on luggage but I was fearful of freakishly cold wind, so I just wore my field gear onto the plane.
Fortunately, Atqasuk was warm and sunny, and the rain on the horizon went around us. So did the caribou, though he was dreadfully curious- we could tell. All our field work was done after we got out to the field at three and before we were back in at nine. It would take five field days of suffering for those chumps at the Barrow site to finish everything-HA.
Oh yeah, and I’m sick. The head-cold variety. It’s not too bad, on account of the fact that I am incredibly tough. Don’t tell the rest of the team that I’m feeling poorly or they will think I’m weak- when really, it was THEY who said, “Oh, Jenny, poor Jenny, don’t you want to stay in from the field today? You look ever so ill. A day off would do you good- and of course we would stay in with you… for safety.”
I won’t let them have the satisfaction!
Sometimes it takes a little effort to get the POOF
To me it is not obvious at all what one would be doing if one were trying to get “the POOF,” but the front page of an old copy of The Anchorage Daily News seems to think that this is a great subhead for the hard-hitting, breaking-news story about… school picture day (“SPD”). Oh Alaska, how cute are you?
In Atqasuk, where we arrived yesterday morning, we live in a house like any other in the town, so there is a better chance of junk laying around. Atqasuk has some strong points, like a faster internet connection, but then the internet is more likely to be down, like it was last night.
I took the opportunity of having no internet to get a bit more sleep before we go out today. I’ve been sleeping pretty well. The light doesn’t bother me at all, but sometimes it’s hot and sometimes it’s cold, and that will occasionally wake me up. I always wake up in the middle of a very complicated plot-based dream and start a new one again the second I fall asleep. I never remember much of them, though. Blasted dream recorders haven’t been invented yet.
I don’t have much time now, either, though the internet is back up. We have one more day with all five of us in the field before three members of our party go back to Barrow tomorrow. Today will have to be productive, though if we see a caribou on the horizon again, of course we will stop and watch.
