14 July 2004

Joined: 23 Mar 2004 Posts: 23

Greetings from Inuvik. Unfortunately the weather is still not cooperating and now smoke from southerly forest fires is moving in so we are still here. The nice thing is that we went back to our first site from yesterday and set up a grid and dug out a hummock and did sampling. The group wants to put time to the best use and this seems to work well.

I have a feeling I will not be able to upload any photos once we reach Prince Patrick so I am going to attach several today. I hope to label them well enough that you can follow what is going on...so here goes.

Essentially the sample site consists of two main things-a grid, and a soil pit.

The grid is 10m x 10m with flags marking each square meter. Care is taken to walk on the grid as little as possible and most people remove their shoes before walking on it. The grid is described as thoroughly as possible including vegetation types and placement, landscape features (ie. hummocks, frost boils), distance to permafrost, and densities of these items. Some grid photos are shown below, hopefully.

The soil pit is a cross section dug in the hummock (in Prince Patrick this will be dug in a frost boil). The soil is dug out to the permafrost which creates a bowl shap. THen a jackhammer is used to get down to the area where the soil has not been disturbed by climate. At this point Chien-Lu and Gary work to take samples of the organic and non organic materials from throughout the pit. They also make a detailed drawing of the soil patterns. Unlike most soil areas, the soil in the Arctic doesn't appear in layers but squiggly lines and round patterns due to pressure changes, heaving (rising), and climate affects.

Along with these two sites a lot of sampling and analysis of vegetation in the surrounding area is occurring. Hopefully we will depart for Prince Patrick tomorrow, otherwise I will write again from Inuvik.