one week in

Joined: 23 Mar 2004 Posts: 24

Well, I've been here a week and a lot has happened since my last journal entry. The work at the test plots continues to go well, and I'm understanding a bit more of the science behind it all.
So far we've removed not just mosses from plots but also Ledum (which is a beautiful evergreen commonly called Labrador Tea), and Betula (also known as Dwarf White Birch). Also, fertilizers(F) phosphorus and nitrogen are being added to some of the plots. So in code the plots are named; {M,MF,MB,MBL,MBLF,BL, et cetera}. Each has it's own precsription.
Important to mention, of course, are the control plots. As with any experiment it's important to keep an unmanipulated "control" for comparison.
In our case we have two types; control/disturbed and undisturbed. The disturbance is basically reaching into the plants and the soil and "roughing them up" a bit to represent the physical manipulation that occurs with any of the removal plots, and undisturbed has nothing done to it.
This is the seventh season for the plots and because Toolik Lake is a LTER site or Long Term Ecological Research site, the test plots should continue well into the future for some real longitudinal data gathering.