Weeding the test plots

Joined: 23 Mar 2004 Posts: 24

Today we spent the day up on the tundra, about 1/4 mile above Toolik Lake.
There are 102- 2meter by 3meter test plots that are being manipulated in various ways. One way is to remove mosses, which is what we did today. Another way is to add fertilizer. Each plot has its own prescription for change.
The two words for the day were resilience and vulnerability. The idea is to test how different species in the tundra are related to one another, and how each one responds to changes in the environment.
Mosses tend to be particularly vulnerable to change. They are a ground cover that happens to hold a great deal of moisture. So if they respond poorly to a changing climate, then what implications does this have for the resilience of other species, and for the ecosystem as a whole? It's really neat to think that such labor intensive and somewhat tedious work can have such telling results!