Changing Seasons Options

[Robert_Oddo]

Wed Aug 10th
There has been a bite to the air the last 4 or 5 days as I notice more and more how the transition from summer to fall occurs up here. Everything seems to be accelerated. Most of the plants on the tundra floor now have turned a brownish color, when you read at night you need a light even though the sun is still up and the air is damper and colder.
Most of us have broken out extra layers of clothes to wear.

Worked out in the zodiacs on the lake today, setting the sediment traps that will be pulled in the summer of 2006. You anchor these with a huge rock that you have to slowly lower off the side of the boat. Along the rope that is attached to the rock you attach sediment traps and a temperature logger and then at the top you put a buoy. It’s easy to get real wet doing this since the rock slips and you are always reaching in to adjust one thing or another.

A lot of the work back at the field station has turned to getting data in Excel files and manipulating data in GIS (geographic information systems). We have created hundreds of different maps and excel spreadsheets. The pace of work has accelerated as well as the hours that everyone works, as everyone scrambles to get everything done before the end of the field season.


tundra plants turning color


laying out the traps on beach, they must be proper depth


attaching trap parts on land


huge rock anchors


help arrives


last minute adjustments


slowly lowering traps on boom


Mike downloading some data in the field