Congratulations Claire!

Samples awaiting dissolved organic carbon analysis

Shimadzu Total Carbon and Total Nitrogen Analyzer (TOC-V)

Shimadzu UV-1800 Spectrophotometer

Horiba FluoroMax-4 Spectrofluorometer

Biotek Microplate Spectrophotometer (PowerWave XS2)

Turner Trilogy Fluorometer

SNOL Muffle Furnace #1

SNOL Muffle Furnace #2

SNOL Drying Oven #1

SNOL Drying Oven #2

Stereo Microscope (Optica SZR-10)

Balance (Ohaus Discovery)

Vacuum Pump (Gast)

Centrifuge (Hermle Z206A)

Click here to watch the video.

It’s a pleasure to finally hold in my hands the compilation of all of this hard work–not just my sweat and tears but that of the writers, web developers, and graphic designers that helped out along the way.  I hope you enjoy reading these science stories as much as I enjoyed telling them.

Buy it on Amazon

Like it on Facebook

Good luck and good science to all on the cruise. I hope the seas calm down!

We are very proud of the work Claire did as an undergraduate participant in the Polaris Project.  It wonderfully fulfills at least two of the three overarching objectives of the Polaris Project: 1) developing the next generation of Arctic scientists, and 2) advancing scientific understanding of the Arctic.  Claire’s research was just published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, a top scientific journal – a remarkable feat for research led by an undergraduate student.  A link to the paper is pasted below.  Congratulations Claire!

Griffin, C. G., K. E. Frey, J. Rogan, and R. M. Holmes.  2011.  Spatial and interannual variability of dissolved organic matter in the Kolyma River, East Siberia, observed using satellite imagery.  Journal of Geophysical Research 116, G03018, doi:10.1029/2010JG001634.

Supplies and luggage sit on the floor of the wet lab waiting to be packed for the journey home or stored to await the arrival of next year’s researchers. © Becky Tachihara

Endings, we learn before we’re old enough to read about them, are a fundamental truth of human experience, but that’s no reason to like them.  Month-long expedition endings evoke a particular sort of bittersweet poignancy.  We’ve come as strangers from all points of the compass to live in very close quarters, on a barge in this case.  We’ve grown not merely to accommodate each other’s foibles and eccentricities, but to enjoy them as an aspect of our common purpose and shared experience.  We’ve become friends.  And then, abruptly, we part.  Maybe not permanently; maybe we’ll stay in touch, but the context will be absent.  This is meaningful only to those of us who were there, but it’s hard now not to think of the experience in personal terms.

The Polaris Project and its important purpose will abide.  The National Science Foundation has announced funding for the next three years.  (After breakfast, Max would ask about research plans, by saying, “Okay, what are you going to do today for the American taxpayer?”)  For the past, present, and future life of the project, Max deserves much credit, but so too do the PIs, most of whom, barring the unforeseen, another fundamental fact of life, will return to supply continuity.  The concept—a combination of education and pure scientific research—works.  I’ve watched it work and doing so learned a lot about the energy contained in common purpose and about this sort of Earth science.

Jorien and Juan Carlos pour over data in the main room of Orbita. As everyone wrapped up their lab work, more people gathered in Orbita, laptops open, to analyze data. © Becky Tachihara

But we wish that these happy facts were unalloyed by that darker one at the heart of the project’s scientific purpose—to investigate and document the present state of nature in the Siberian Arctic while it’s changing beneath our feet.  Several of us were discussing climate change yesterday in the context of timescales after a talk by a Russian paleontologist.  He ended it by saying that he didn’t believe that global warming would last for long.

“What do you mean by ‘long’?” John asked.

“About a thousand years,” the Russian replied.

A thousand years…. Yeah, from the detached perspective of geologic time, we can see Earth change from glacial to inter-glacial periods, evolution to mass extinctions and back again.   We see that Earth abides through the changes, and the eye-blink timescale of human lifespans don’t much matter.  The Arctic won’t die, even if the polar bears do; it’ll just be a different place, a tick of the geologic second hand for later generations of scientists to explicate.  But this is too sanguine, even reductive.  It’s like saying, sure, there’s injustice, oppression, and poverty in the world, but then, there always has been.  No, the now matters.  Never before in history have humans owned such power as we do now.  We’re used to our power to replace entire ecosystems with things to serve our interests and next-quarter earnings.  As Zimov would have it, we did that in Siberia way back in Pleistocene times when we killed off the big grazers.  But our present power transcends that needed to eradicate ecosystems.  Our power is changing the world’s climate; it’s geophysical in scope, and to exercise it all we have to do is nothing.  That has to mean something for right now and for tomorrow.  Never mind the next eon, at least for now.

I don’t know, maybe I’m just feeling a little melancholy over endings.  Twenty-four hours from this writing, we’ll be back in the air.  Cherskii-Yakutsk- Moscow-Washington D.C.—then dispersal.  But I hear people in the next room laughing about something.  There’s been a lot of that, laughter, since we left D.C. seemingly so long ago, yet the time has passed in a finger snap.

An intriguing cloud formation hangs over the taiga, dyed shades of pink and orange by the sunset. © Becky Tachihara

Late last night the Arctic put on one of its inimitable sky shows.  No doubt it’s cued by a mixture of particle-free air, complex weather systems, high-latitude light refraction, and ice, but, watching the fantastic colors and the dynamics, you don’t think much about scientific explanations.  The show is spectacular, evocative, moving, almost unbelievable as if composed by an over-caffeinated Romantic scenic painter.  And only a reckless writer with a lot of space and time would try to evoke it in words, except to say that once you’ve seen the show, you never forget it.  The memory of that sky is one of the reasons why we love and long to return to the Arctic.  But it also brings us to the ending.

We’ve stayed two nights in what we’ve come to call our “hotel-like structure” on the outskirts of Moscow.  The students have verbally presented the findings from their individual projects; we’ve seen a bit of the big city, and just finished our last meal in Russia.  Tomorrow we fly ten hours to Washington.  “When does it end?” Max asked in an after-dinner speech.  Did it end when we said goodbye to the Zimovs, the Davidoffs, Valentina, and the others at the barge?  When we took off from the Cherskii airstrip past the crashed planes on the edges of the runway?  When we left Yakutsk, our last stop in Siberia?  Here in Moscow or tomorrow in D.C.?  Or maybe, Max suggested, it never ends in memory for those of us who’ve lived it.

Anyway, I don’t want to go all runny.  And there’s threat of Karaoke in the air, so I’ll close.  I’ve had an unforgettable experience, and I’m not alone in that.  Best of luck to the student scientists, the PIs, and to the future of the Polaris Project, and the future of the Arctic (and of Polaris the dog.)

The group gathers on the roof of Orbita to watch a spectacular sunset and enjoy one of our last nights in Cherskiy. © Becky Tachihara

We wait in Domodedovo, one of Moscow’s many airports, after traveling 8 time zones in three days. A brief stay in the city of Yakusk, where buildings stand on stilts to stop from sinking into permafrost, punctuated our 6am departure to Moscow.  We stayed at a hotel-like structure outside Moscow, gave presentations on our findings, and took a riverboat tour then walked Arbat Street.

We are excited to see our friends and family, but disappointed to leave Russia and the friendships we have formed.  All is well in Moscow, having just past through the hectic passport control.  See you soon (after a ten hour flight with 8 more time zone changes)!

The group of twenty-two people, students, PIs, and the Zimovs, reached the fringe of the ocean 100 kilometers from the station on a hot, cloudless afternoon.  They hiked the tundra, fished, and actually went swimming in the East Siberian Sea, a sweet, memorable day.  But then, in minutes, the temperature nosedived thirty degrees, visibility dropped to nothing, and a massive storm rolled over them.  They were stuck, and they needed shelter.  Quick.  Sergey and Nikita zipped off in one of the small boats, disappearing into the murk to search for it.  When they returned, they directed everyone to walk three kilometers down the rocky beach to a deserted fisherman’s shack.  They did, and in that rude hut they huddled, with minimal food and less warmth, all that night and most all of the next day.

Max explicitly stated the story’s moral in case we’d missed it:  Conditions in the north change rapidly; you cannot assume anything about the weather up there from that down here (latitudinally speaking); be prepared.

So I borrowed a couple of extra thermal layers from Andy, one of last year’s veterans who would remain behind, and on the eve of the expedition, I laid out my gear on the bed.  Was it enough?  I’d already learned how suddenly Arctic weather changes, but that was aboard research ships and big sailboats with beds and galleys and heads; you bring your own shelter.  This was different, and I’m not land experienced.  But as I inventoried my stuff, I sort of envied them their adventure, their story eminently repeatable to the folks at home.  (“Gee, dear, you’re such an intrepid adventurer.”  “Well, I try.”)  I concluded I had enough gear to carry me into the heart of darkness.

Damp, rubbery fog covered the river on departure morning.  Would we go?

“We’re going,” Max announced, “in three boats.  Sergey can take seven [in his 35-foot cabin cruiser called Speedy, probably the only fiberglass boat in Siberia], five will go with Nikita in the forty [horsepower, aluminum skiff], and one with me in the twenty-five.”

We piled aboard.

“Hey, Matt,” Nikita called, “get lifejacket on, now.”  Nikita is safety officer.

As we motored north toward the tundra, the morning clouds broke up to reveal clear blue skies reflected in the still waters of the Kolyma. © Becky Tachihara

The gun-metal-gray sky and river seemed to deepen the depressed state of Cherskii town.  In Soviet times, this was an active river port.  Rivers still link isolated Siberian settlements, not only along the length of a single river, but across the network of rivers, the Yenisei, Ob, and Lena, each larger than the Mississippi, all flowing northward into the marginal seas of the Arctic Ocean.  The towns were jumping in Soviet times—coal, oil, military supplies, people moving up and downstream—but now they’re dead or dying, and Cherskii, I hear, is typical:  Forlorn ten-storey apartment cubes that must have been depressing as hell when alive, but, now, empty with blackened, corpse-eye windows, they’re monuments to failure and despair; fallen-down structures that once were something, but, roofs caved in, they’re too far gone to tell what; fifty-gallon oil drums, some flattened, others still round, all rusting away on the beach; ghostly, heavy-lifting ship cranes standing along the seawall as if vainly waiting for ships to load.

Then we pass the Cherskii airport, a dusty, dirt strip with more crashed aircraft lying about than a nervous flier would like to see.  We’ve also seen Cherskii in sparkling bright sun, but when the light shines on the field of silver oil-storage tanks at the top of the hill it reflects only dark irony, never possibility.

A settlement north of Cherisky stands forlorn on the banks of the Kolyma where an abandoned cargo barge lies abandoned at the base of the cliffs. © Becky Tachihara

Our little flotilla motored on down the dance-floor-flat and sprawling-wide Kolyma River.  Often, after Sergey motioned for me to take the wheel, I couldn’t distinguish, without his hand signals, the main channel from broad bays and vast lowlands.  There seemed always to be land ahead.  I had envisioned something like the Hudson or the Ohio River.  But those riverbeds are disciplined by topography or by human intervention.  Not the Kolyma.  It’s wild, untrammeled, and, flowing over flat land, it’s free to spread out and breathe with the seasons.  A low-flying chevron of white, long-necked swans crossed our bows.

“Here we stop,” said Sergey two hours later.

Where?

“This is end of trees.”  He slowed, the bow dug in, and he turned toward the right bank.  From here north to the East Siberian Sea, there’s not a single tree.

We climbed the bouldered bank onto spongy ground, like walking on a mattress of mosses and unidentifiable lichens, Labrador tea, and bearberries spotted with wildflowers, purple fire and forget-me-nots and who knows what else.  The tundra is beautiful in its sheer strangeness, an exotic environment, and vaguely haunting for that.  Here summer seems not a season, but an exception.

On our way to the tundra, we stopped at the northern tree boundary. While the terrestrial team worked, the rest of us picked berries! © Becky Tachihara

We shed layer after layer in the heat, down to tee shirts and a coating of Deet.  People sprawled on the tundra and played like kids on the first fine summer day at a Coney Island 69 degrees North.  Others, however, did some science.  The terrestrial team picked a spot that seemed typical, laid down their meter-square pipe frame, then plucked and bagged every bit of vegetation within it.  They’ll take the sample back to the lab, segregate it into varieties, and weigh it.  Then they’ll dry it in a purpose-built oven and compare that weight to the moist weight.  In the final step, they burn it down to ash and weigh the ash.  The difference between that weight and the dry weight equals the quantity of carbon it contained.

Other students took tree-core samples, extracting soda-straw-sized cylinders.  These they sand smooth, mount in a slot of wood, and under the microscope count the growth rings.  This process, repeated on nearby trees to factor out anomalies, produces season-to-season climate information.  Allison had showed me a microscope view of a larch tree about five inches in diameter that was 250 years old.  Here at the stressed edge of their existence, 250-year-old trees were probably smaller still.

Nikita speeds past us in “The Forty.” His passengers are hunkered down for the long trip, but are also positively beaming with excitement. © Becky Tachihara

We reloaded the boats and headed farther downriver past the landmark shack where the veterans sheltered last year.  We stopped on a slate beach strewn with the weathered trunks of huge trees and broken branches.  It’s easy to visualize from the size and quantity of the driftwood the Kolyma’s terrible force of flow during the spring ice-out, called the freshet.

Picking our way through the knee-high dwarf birch, we climbed to the crest of a steep-sided hill for a panoramic view of the vast, green, beautiful floodplain through which the little Sukharnaya River wove sinuously, and there we stopped.

“Here,” Sergey said, “was town.  During war, KGB took people off streets of Moscow, St. Petersburg, all cities, doctors, workers, any persons, and sent them to fish for food.  Hundreds of tons of fish they took from here.  Many persons died.”

“What was the name of the town?” I wondered.

The remnants of a Soviet-era fishing settlement stand scattered on a ridge overlooking the tundra toward the mouth of the Kolyma. © Becky Tachihara

Sergey didn’t know.  It was nameless now.  There was nothing left but stray pieces of lumber lying patternlessly on the plain.  You’d take them for driftwood; you’d never know humans lived and died in this sublime isolation—were it not for the dozen or so sad, weathered grave markers, crosses and broken Russian Orthodox religious symbols made of gray, weathered boards and mounted on tall driftwood poles, in order, I suppose, that they remain visible above eight feet of snow.  Some were still standing straight, others canted at acute angles on the way to collapse; some had already fallen.

Hiking along the ridge near where we landed the boats, we had an amazing view over the tundra and across the Sukharnhaya River to the dark shadows of mountains in the distance. © Becky Tachihara

We turned our backs on the ghosts and, incongruous in our yellow, black, red, and orange high-tech wicking wear, made our way downslope toward the river.  I figured we were off on a general sightseeing hike, but, no, there was purpose to it—the same for which the KGB snatched people off the streets—fish.  You could see nice-sized grayling hanging languidly in the clear water, quite different from the tannin-dark Kolyma.   Sergey and Max assembled spinning gear, and Eric his fly rod.  They caught fish on their first casts.  Eric turned out to be a skilled fly fisherman, but then he’s Norwegian.  (That evening we’d learn about the Oslo bombings.)  Matt caught a fish nearly a meter long with black spots and red slashes on its flanks that no one, not even Sergey, could identify.  It was a sylvan scene right out of A River Runs Through It if you ignored the expanse of tundra and the purple mountains in the far distance.  But then, as ever, it was time to go.

We trudged back to the beach.

“Is there anyone behind you?” Nikita, safety officer, asked.

“I don’t think so.  There usually isn’t.”

Max and I, in the slower twenty, took off first.  Sergey in Speedy didn’t catch up until we were in sight of the Cherskii, white light glinting on oil tanks.  Where was Nikita and the five others in the forty?

Matt, Eirik, Max and Ludda stand ankle deep in the Sukharnhaya River, casting their lines and waiting for fish to bite. © Becky Tachihara

We pulled alongside the barge only minutes after Speedy to find Jorien, Paul, and Sergey Davidoff unloading their gear from their trip back upriver to Duvanii Yar for more water samples.  Then Nikita’s boat arrived.  It was 2030, a half-hour before dinnertime.

“Amazing,” said John, who’d stayed behind.  “We didn’t expect you back till about midnight.  So what happened?”

“Nothing.  It was easy and beautiful.”

“Then what are you going to write about?

“About how it was hell out there.  Rain, snow, thirty knots across the deck.  We were lucky to get out with our lives.

“Okay.  Good.”

Matt shows off the biggest catch of the day. We’re still not entirely sure what kind of fish it was, but it sure was tasty. © Becky Tachihara

1. You see tree rings through a microscope (complete with cross hairs for measuring) whenever you go to sleep
2. You know the difference between loamy sand and sandy loam
3. You can estimate the carbon content of a given amount of biomass based on how it smells while it’s combusting
4. You secretly hope you’ll get an increment borer for your birthday
5. You know what a clinometer is (but not necessarily how to use it)
6. You are amazed that nearly 4000 grams of moss can fit in a 1 m² quadrant, in addition to the shrubs, woody debris, other plants, and dog
7. You get overly excited when the 100^th ring of a tree does not land on an extremely skinny ring, but rather the much wider one next to it
8. You can calculate how far you could throw a stump based on its DBH
9. You haven’t forgiven John for leaving the soil auger in Pleistocene Park
10. You become increasingly anxious when approaching every 10^th ring of a tree core while measuring
11. You have calluses on your hands from sanding off your skin while processing tree cores
12. If you came across a plot full of wet, silty soil and thick with trees (that were also rotten on the inside), you would give it a site name of <**^%E@*!>

Special thanks to Allison and Sam for help on compiling this list!

The 2011 terrestrial team – Dylan, Sam and Allison – enjoys a sunset from the roof of Orbita. © Becky Tachihara

Million-year-old carbon.

We are golden, but caught in the devil’s bargain,

And we’ve got to get ourselves back to the Garden.

“Woodstock” Joni Mitchell

One of our PIs Jorien Vonk finished her Ph.D. last year at the University of Stockholm.  She studied the “remobilization of old carbon” during its transport from rivers to the Arctic Ocean.  A friend, a nonscientist, congratulated her on her success and then asked, “What are you going to do now?”

Decked out in her bug shirt, lifejacket, waterproof pants and rubber boots, Jorien sits with her gear in the inflatable boat she and Eirik will take out on Airport Lake to collect data and samples. © Becky Tachihara

Certainly not a dumb question, but it points out a misunderstanding among the rest of us about how this kind of science works.  After four years of concentrated effort and travel to remote places, hadn’t Jorien learned all there was to know about river-to-ocean carbon transport in the Arctic?  Well, no, she will likely devote her entire career to the problem.  She might “move farther up the rivers,” as she put it, but she won’t go far from the Arctic or old carbon.  The question she’s grappling with is just that complex.

But I can empathize with her friend’s misunderstanding.  Until a few years ago after a sequence of coincidences introduced me to their world, I had never even met a professional scientist.  I’d met a couple of science writers, but no real scientists.  We just don’t travel in the same circles.  When in the 19^th century people spoke of culture, they spoke of art, literature, drama, music, and science.  No longer.  Now science is segregated.  Now we think of it, if we think of it at all, as an esoteric, even arcane endeavor, riddled with impenetrable jargon and spattered with acronyms, a bit geeky, and too tough for little ole me.  Besides, I’m pretty busy these days.

Laurel fills in a chart with the results of chemical tests she and John have been running on water samples gathered from various streams throughout the Kolyma River watershed. © Becky Tachihara

But when you get right down to it, scientists, no matter their particular professional concentration, seek to understand how the natural world works.  We live in the world.  Isn’t that sound reason for the rest of us to look over their shoulder as they work?  The trouble is, nature is dizzyingly complex, the word nature misleadingly singular.  Nature’s systems are multiple, full of cycles, oscillations, variations across all timescales, and layered fluxes that don’t readily reveal themselves to the honest seeker.  Far too much data has been collected, research performed, technology developed, knowledge accumulated since, say, Darwin’s time when science was called “natural philosophy” and when the great man learned all there was to know about botany, geology, and biology, for any contemporary scientist to call him/herself a generalist.  Even a specialist can’t know their entire specialty.  That means that there are too many shoulders to look over all at once.  The word scientist is likewise misleadingly singular.

Jorien’s an intrepid, tough field scientist.  Watching her disappear into mosquito-ridden hellholes (MRH) to sample water in a flood-plain lake, I was glad my work didn’t require me to go along.  She was after the carbon, never mind the conditions.  She’s not alone in that.  Everyone in this project is equally committed and intrepid.  She—like me, like the ambitious rest of us—is doing her work for personal reasons, to satisfy curiosity, say, or to attain a level of peer prestige, any number of personal motives no more altruistic than nonscientists’.  And so what if we choose not to pay attention to what scientists are doing?  It’s not like they’re paying unbalanced attention to what we’re doing.  Besides, they’re pretty busy following the carbon.

However, something quite new has reared its head in the relationship (non-relationship?) between scientists and the rest of us.  Now science itself has come under attack by a well-funded, well-organized, and politically well-connected opposition.  That opposition has exploited our ignorance of what scientists do and how science works to perpetrate their corrupt agenda.  To wit:  There is no such thing as global warming.  But if there were, it would be just another natural cycle; it’s not our fault.  And even if it were our fault, there’s nothing we can do about it without ruining our beloved economy.  Even more irrationally and much more nefariously, this opposition accuses scientists of perpetrating a vast climate-change conspiracy to frighten us about climate-change doomsday in order to pad their grant money.  Can’t you just picture it, 22,000 scientists gather each year for the American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting in San Francisco, biologists, botanists, oceanographers, biogeochemists, physicists, you name it, and all manner of subdivisions within each, people who don’t even speak each others’ technical lingo, and they’re all plotting, probably on Castro Street, to sell us their global warming scam.

“What’ll we give ‘em this year?”  Heh-heh, mustache twirling.

“How ‘bout we run the old sea-level rise routine?  We’ll show the sods that map of Florida, everything south of Disney World underwater.”

“Good, that gets ‘em right where they live.”

“Just don’t get too technical.”

“Yeah, remember, they’re not too bright.”

Preposterous.  Idiotic.

Yesterday morning our PI Andy Bunn gave us the presentation he gives to interested groups of nonscientists.  He speaks down to no one, nor does he advocate for a particular course of action in response to global warming.  It’s only the physics.  And the physics is simple:  Carbon dioxide is a heat-trapping gas.  We’ve known that since 1859.  This is not a new idea cooked up at the AGU.  We know, further, that since the Industrial Revolution, the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen steadily, even accounting for seasonal variation.  One of the things scientists do is measure.  We now have the instruments to measure atmospheric carbon dioxide.  It’s gone up from 280 parts per million to about 390 ppm—and continuing to rise.

Then Andy made a neat point.  There’s not all that much money to be gotten by proving something everybody already knows.  If on the other hand, he could prove that carbon dioxide is not a heat-trapping gas, or that its quantity in the atmosphere is not increasing—that would make him a famous and fortunate paradigm shifter.  “It would be Darwin, Einstein, and Bunn,” he said.

The sun hangs low over the horizon, creating a shining path on the surface of the Panteleikha. © Becky Tachihara

Since the physics is so straightforward, the naysayers have had to hustle to find a route of attack.  One reason they’ve succeeded to the extent they have is because of our assumption that science is hard.  They throw in some pseudo-scientific jargon, natural cycles, blah-blah, Al Gore, blah-blah, enemies of free-market capitalism, global cooling in the ‘70s, elitist pinkos, blah-blah-blah.  They are the ones who think we’re stupid.  What we decide to do or not do about global warming is one thing—we have some choice about that.  But we can’t argue about the science, about the physics.  It’s laughable, therefore, to say, “I don’t believe in global warming.”  Physics is not an issue, like, say, the place of prayer in public schools about which we can argue.  Physics is not faith-based.

I used to wonder why, in the face of this vicious excoriation by charlatans and know-nothings, scientists didn’t stand up and fight back.  Having learned a bit more about what scientists do, I no longer ask that question.  Scientists deal in facts, the very things the naysayers intentionally corrupt, and so ends sensible discourse before it begins.  Further, as an intellectual precept, scientists are skeptical; you’ve got to prove it.  Scientific skepticism is not inherently compatible with soapbox advocacy.  Also, as Paul Mann, another of our PIs, put it, “What do you want us to say that we haven’t already said?”  He was referring to the IPCC Assessment Reports.  Hundreds of scientists from dozens of disciplines and dozens of nations got together, and after considering thousands of peer-reviewed papers, hashed out the language—and came to a consensus.  Imagine, all those disciplines, all those nationalities coming to a consensus: Human-induced warming of the climate-system is widespread.

The group walks along a ridge, making our way across the tundra toward the Sukharnaya River. Of all the places our scientific ventures have taken us, the trip north to the tundra boasts some of the most beautiful and tranquil scenery. © Becky Tachihara

Scientific discoveries are communicated via peer-reviewed technical journals.  We would find most of them impenetrable; so would, say, a forest ecologist trying to read a piece in The Journal of Physical Oceanography.  They, like today’s science, are and must be highly specialized.  Careers are measured not by the research you conduct, but by the papers you publish about it, and it’s tough to get a paper published, because of the peer-review process.  You have to prove your point with data, and your results have to be duplicable to the satisfaction of a panel of your peers.  The process can take over a year from submission, through revision to final publication.  Acceptance rates compared to submissions are small.

Several years ago a very smart historian of science named Naomi Oreskes counted all the peer-reviewed journals dealing directly or indirectly with climate change.  There were tens of thousands; the actual number has since been updated.  And she compared them to the number of papers that proved that climate change was nonexistent.  There were none.  Zero.

Still as glass, Shuchi Lake reflects the trees and sky as it rests in the midst of the verdant green larch forest. As well as presenting a lovely landscape, Shuchi Lake has been the subject of many scientific studies related to exhalation of methane from deep below its surface. © Becky Tachihara

In the bottom of most lakes, dissolved oxygen approaches anoxia — zero milligrams per liter  (it was 0.05 milligrams per liter in Lake Shuchi yesterday). This is because a combination of physical and biological processes. Air is constantly being absorbed into the water of the lake. This is good for the oxygen breathers.  The dissolved oxygen moves downward through diffusion, but can only get so far before most of it is used up by organisms (past what limnologists call the thermocline, about 3 meters below the surface yesterday).    Breathers need to get a bit more creative near the bottom.  That’s where methane comes in.  The freshly thawed organic matter from the talik is tasty microbe food, a complex mixture of biomass.  Without oxygen, they cannot exhale carbon dioxide like us, instead they exhale methane, which rise to the surface in bubbles that look deceivingly like fish.

I sat floating tranquilly, with Eirik dipping in a probe to measure acidity, temperature, and oxygen every half meter and taking water samples.  Thoughts drifted to flies and flyfishing, and our conversation bubbled with excitement as we started to see rise after rising fish.

Laurel uses a funnel and glass vials to collect samples of methane bubbling up from the bottom of a stream. Tracking the methane coming out of lakes and streams is a key part of accounting for Arctic carbon stocks. © Becky Tachihara

In the bowl of this Siberian thermokarst lake, surrounded by rich green of moss shrubs and boreal forest, methane rises far more often than fish, which is much more exciting than fish for the carbon cycle. We paddled around the boat, using a paddle each like a canoe near hotspots of bubbling (this ebullition happens 24 hours a day).

Look at Cherski on google maps, look at how many lakes there are to the east.  Get excited about fish, but be conscious of the methane bubbling out of lakes all over the arctic. As the climate warms, these taliks will form more rapidly, increasing methane release from lake bottoms, and creating further climate warming.  Your friend may give you positive feedback on catching a nice lake trout, but the positive feedback of methane release from thermokarst lakes is a significant source in the global methane budget.

But even during a fairly relaxed excursion like this one, watching students and PIs work constantly reminds me that while our surroundings are beautiful and we can take great joy in exploring them, this is first and foremost a scientific venture. While much of the work we do here, outside of our sometimes eventful trips into the field, would likely seem mundane to the outside observer (measuring tree rings, sifting soil, taking water sample after water sample…) every data point the students and PIs generate brings us closer to a better understanding of Arctic ecosystems, both in general and specific to the comparatively understudied Siberian Arctic. And as every member of our group will point out – and in fact many of them have – understanding the Arctic is increasingly important in our warming world because changes in the Arctic have the potential for global implications.

I’m absolutely fascinated by the evolution of everyone’s projects. As the end of our Siberian journey looms ever closer (I can’t believe we have less than a week left in Cherisky!) spreadsheets and graphs appear on the walls of the barge for everyone to examine. I’ve heard some stories of interesting results already, and though many of the details of the chemistry and biology involved are beyond my knowledge and experience, I feel like I am learning a lot about how Arctic systems function. Which is really the whole point of the Polaris Project. And the more I learn, the more I want to know more. I’m hoping this feeling is contagious, because I want my video/photography work to have a similar effect on everyone who sees it.

One of the overarching goals of Polaris is to train/inspire the next generation of Arctic researchers. And as I look out the window of the barge at the sun sparkling off the surface of the Panteleikha River, I’ve got to say, I think I’m hooked.

One of the rooms in the soil lab (aka the dry lab, the yellow lab, the winter lab…) is jam packed with analytical equipment amidst remnants of the building’s former life: a piano becomes a table for various tanks, a framed portrait still hangs on one wall and Victorian-esque wall sconces hang intermittently over the patterned wallpaper. © Becky Tachihara

In this lab, I analyze CO2 concentration using a Mason jar with at least three tubes going into the lid and even more valves. One tube connects to a pump – powered by a car battery – that pushes in atmospheric air. The other set feeds through a boxy machine that in mysterious ways presents a value for concentration of carbon dioxide. Nikita powers the contraption by appropriating a car battery using two aluminum wires (“What other lab would just have aluminum wire lying around?” –Nikita)

Max should never be allowed to name a lake again since he decided on Fledoma Lake, aping the congruence of flood plain and yedoma soils. Fledoma Lake (Nikita more logically called it Filipovka Lake for the river it feeds, while Anya nominated “Mr. Phil.”)

This gull was determined to protect its nest at Attack Lake. © Emily Sturdivant

Attack Stream. That was our “discovery” in the second boat excursion of the day. We wound through the curves of the Ambolikha River to a feeder stream and from there to a flood plain lake. As we emerged from the grassy banks (grassy from a boat, but slick and muddy on foot) we jerked up at a sharp screech to see an attacking gull intent on out motor boat as a threat to her nest and determined to exterminate us through either destroying our ear drums, pooping on us, or attempting to drag us out of the boat with her tiny gull’s feet. Far enough downstream of the lake, we settled at a stream and fittingly dubbed it Attack Stream. Only after the sample labels had dried did Max pull out his iPad to find an entirely different lake as the source, now known as Gull Lake (Gull and Attack Lakes must always be paired.).

Emily uses syringes to extract gas from a water sample in order to measure carbon dioxide concentrations. © Becky Tachihara

Since this is the Siberian Arctic, we are surrounded by unnamed lakes; lakes that may only last a few centuries or less before merging into a neighboring river or lake. They only become named when bottles must be labeled, GPS points correlated with meaningless words from the overly creative minds of scientists. The process must appear similar to naming our ubiquitous mosquito bites. Yet, in the middle of Attack Lake, I remembered my childhood dream to discover an island, and live somewhere never before visited by humans.

Various tubes curl into and around a mason jar rigged to a machine that will measure the concentration of carbon dioxide in a gas sample. © Becky Tachihara

There’s always new territory here, from the lakes, to the experiences, to the scientifically logical ways of quantifying interactions. Yet, even the novelty now feels familiar; I feel at home in the barge meal room/common room, now typing at 2 am, with the sky still light and mist blowing across the river – what causes that??? The tablecloth features many kinds of bread. What uncharted places will I go tomorrow?

Dusk light filters through a layer of wispy clouds creating the illusion of a sunset. © Becky Tachihara

Answer in addendum: Went down the Panteleikha to find Duckling Stream, Tern Lake, and Moose Beach (I saw my first arctic moose), all now labeled on the GPS. ALSO, it just hit me that all the terns swooping around Tern Lake migrated from Antarctica in the last few months. Incredible.

Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC), Second Assessment Report, 1995.

There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities.

IPCC, Third Assessment Report, 2001.

Human-induced warming of the climate system is widespread.

IPCC, Fourth Assessment Report, 2007.

The climate is an angry beast, and we’re poking it with sticks

Wallace Broecker

“Four times more carbon is contained in permafrost,” Max said this morning, “than in the entire biomass in the rest of the world.”

Wait, did I hear that right?  The entire rest of the world’s biomass?  Four times?

“That’s right.”

He then posed this rhetorical question:  “What can be done in the Arctic about climate change?”  And answered it:  “Nothing.”

The Arctic, where only a tiny fraction of the world’s population lives, produces almost no greenhouse gasses.  The forces changing world climate originate south of the Arctic Circle, where most of us live; yet they are inevitably transported to the Arctic aboard the winds and ocean currents.  This unique region is uniquely vulnerable to climate change.  Arctic scientists, no matter their individual disciplines, are well aware that the climate in the Arctic has already changed.  And those of us who are not scientists but who have fallen in love with the Arctic seas, the light, and the landscape want to shout hard words and profane admonitions.  Do not ruin this magnificent place! But that’s futile and a bit silly—at whom do we shout?—so with some effort I’ll suspend anger and sadness for a few hundred words and try to speak in measured scientific language.

An abandoned barrel sits on the side of a road we walk along to get from Orbita to Y4, Shuchi Lake and a number of terrestrial survey sites. © Becky Tachihara

It all comes down to carbon and, as Max has been thinking, time.  The carbon cycle works on short, long, and very long timescales.  On a daily basis, there is that balance between photosynthesis and respiration.  To simplify, green plants and trees exploit solar energy to photosynthesize.  Doing so, they take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen as a byproduct.  At night the opposite process occurs, but to a lessor extent.  The same balance occurs on seasonal scales if we think of summer as a long day, and vice versa.  Therefore, forests are net carbon sinks, which is why it’s a good idea not to chop them down.  Then when plants and trees die, their carbon is eaten by microorganisms, which respire carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.  (As breathers, we do the same thing.)  But that carbon dioxide then gets transferred out of the atmosphere back to the plants through photosynthesis.  That generally balanced process has been going down since living plants first appeared on Earth.

An abandoned shack decomposes on the riverbank. According to Nikita, this shack was once part of the Northeast Science Station. © Becky Tachihara

Some 359 million years ago at the dawn of the Carboniferous period an unprecedented profusion of ferns and leafy trees sprang to life in an atmosphere extra rich in carbon dioxide; that’s why it’s called the Carboniferous.  About 250 million years’-worth of plants lived and died, and then, as now, microorganisms ate at their remains and respired carbon dioxide.  (In technical language, carbon delectable to microorganisms is said to be labile.)   However, the microorganisms were unable to consume and decompose all that plant material, labile though it was.

The Carboniferous environment was generally wet, swampy, fetid, and humid; we might visualize the cypress swamps in Louisiana bayou country spread globally.  Thus, when the trees and plants died, they fell into swampy water, which is low in oxygen and highly acidic, undesirable conditions for the propagation of microorganisms.  In other words, photosynthesis (or “primary production”) exceeded respiration. When that happens, carbon matter accumulates, and when it happens over millions of years, a lot of carbon accumulates.  Never has it accumulated in such quantities as during the Carboniferous period.  Many more millions of years passed after the close of the Carboniferous, and this carbon was buried by sediment, which eventually was compressed into rock wherein thick reservoirs of carbon remained locked.

Sam holds up a piece of a Duvannyi Yar ice wedge to the light to look at layers formed over the course of thousands of years. © Becky Tachihara

Sooner or later some other world-changing geologic activity—volcanoes, say, or a tectonic uplift—would occur to awaken the cycle by exposing the sleeping carbon to the air where ensuing generations of microorganisms could chomp on it respiring fresh carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.  However, we discovered the carbon deposits before dynamic geology exposed them—but after other geologic processes had transformed the carbon into what we now call fossil fuel.

We learned that by burning this very, very old carbon we could do things humans had never done before.  It was a wonderful discovery, downright Promethean.  We could heat our homes in winter, cool them in summer, light them at night; we could power modes of transportation capable of moving people and large products over great distances very rapidly.  We acquired unprecedented mobility.  By burning ancient carbon, we could power a vast range of smaller devices for our personal pleasure, development, and edification including the computers on which you’re reading these words and the music I’m listening to as I write them.  We love to burn carbon; we do so now to the tune of eight billion tons each year.  But then relatively recently we discovered the darker side to our love affair.  We learned that it was altering our climate.  We didn’t mean to.  Who would have imagined we owned geophysical-scale power?  Now we know that we do.  Only energy-industry shills, corporate errand boys, and willful ideologues deny it.

Ludda pours a solution of soil and water into a clean filter. The samples need to run clear after filtering so the analysis will be accurate, so she is meticulous. © Becky Tachihara

But the more thoughtful and honest among us may still be unaware of this other stock of younger, call it intermediate-timescale carbon frozen some twenty to fifty thousand years ago beneath the Siberian landscape—four times greater in mass than all the rest of the biomass carbon on Earth.  Burning Carboniferous-period carbon is causing deleterious effects in atmosphere, but at least we’ve gained measurable value and quality-of-life improvement by doing so.  Also, we have a degree of choice in what we do or don’t do in the future.  If we can muster the individual and somehow the political will, if we apply the same sort of intellectual facilities and technical capabilities that have brought us to this remove, turning the Holocene, our present geologic period spanning the last 10,000 years, into the “Anthropocene,” then we might mitigate the self-destructive side of physical human advancement.  Maybe not.  But at least we can’t say we have no choice.  However, nothing good will result if we release the permafrost genie from the frozen ground.  We can’t make use of that carbon; we can’t burn it.  Its exposure to the air will only hurt us, and we’ll have no choice except to endure the upshot.

Lightbulbs hang from the ceiling in the permafrost cave below the soil lab. The cave is kept at 10 degrees Celsius and is used for cold storage of samples, moose meat , some tools and assorted beverages. © Becky Tachihara

As I watch these diligent scientists and students try to glean the state of permafrost carbon, I think about the Arctic and our relationship to it in something like literary terms, specifically the role of retribution in tragic drama.  (Macbeth murders the king, loosing chaos on the land.  Resolution requires retribution; Macbeth must die.)  Here we are, inflicting our anthropogenic warming on the delicate Arctic.  The Arctic is helpless in the face of it.  But if we hurt it badly enough, if we push it far enough beyond some yet-unknown tipping point to actually thaw the permafrost, then the retributive result may well be akin to climate chaos.  Maybe that’s to strain the science as well as the metaphor.  I don’t know, maybe after these carbon scientists finish collecting their water and soil samples and their subsequent lab analysis of them, they’ll find some good news for the Arctic.  Maybe it’s not too late.  Maybe we still have time time to stave off the retributive chaos.

Smooth as glass, the Panteleikha reflects the cloudy evening sky – a stunning example of the sheer beauty of this place we have the opportunity to study. © Becky Tachihara

Sam measures the diameter of a still standing dead tree, which the survey team calls a “snag.” © Becky Tachihara

Today is a physically easy but mentally active day for the terrestrial team.   Over the past two days we estimated and collected biomass from each of our four plots in the area, and also measured snags (standing dead trees) and coarse woody debris (fallen dead trees).  The biomass was from a one-meter square quadrant per plot, sorted into moss/grasses and everything else.  Back at Orbita we went through it again – pulling anything out of the moss pile that didn’t belong and then sorting everything else into shrubs, vaccinium, Labrador tea, and fine woody debris.  The goal is to figure out the amount of carbon stored in the aboveground biomass, so our next step was to weigh each category.  We then take a subsample of each, weigh it, dry it, and weigh it again.  The drying process takes 24 hours, so we are still working on the samples from the first plot.  We will then combust a small portion of the subsample to determine carbon content, which can then be scaled up to larger quantities of biomass since we know the weigh for each category within the quadrant, and can average those to estimate groundcover for the entire plot (we only collected biomass once in each plot, but we estimated it in four locations per plot).  In the meantime, we are analyzing data and religiously gluing, sanding, counting, and measuring tree rings to be assessed for relationships between tree growth rates over time as well as productivity.  Yesterday Allison counted a tree core that was over 350 years old!

Dylan and Sam measure the length and diameter of downed trees as part of the terrestrial survey. In survey terms, dead trees that are no longer standing are called “coarse woody debris” along with other dead wood matter that accumulates on the forest floor. © Becky Tachihara

The weather has cooled off a bit and become a bit more variable – more clouds, wind, and some occasional rain.  Which has been a welcomed change (less mosquitoes and much more comfortable for working in the field – at least for the terrestrial team), although it doesn’t bode well for our trip north.  Hopefully sometime this week the weather will be adequate enough!  We are planning to go to Pleistocene Park tomorrow though, where we hope to get another plot completely finished with help from the rest of the (awesome) group.

Love to everyone back home!

Dylan picks through a handful of moss gathered at one of the terrestrial survey’s plots. The moss will later be weighed, dried and combusted as part of calculating aboveground biomass. © Becky Tachihara

A mounted, sanded and “dotted” tree core sits on the table in Orbita where terrestrial team members will sit at the microscope for hours on end counting and measuring miniscule tree rings. © Becky Tachihara

Using a microscope and a very, very sharp pencil, Dylan counts rings in a tree core, making a mark every 10, 50 and 100 rings. © Becky Tachihara

Luckily we take full advantage of every waking hour. Groups are always headed out to collect water samples, measure trees, and feed the legion of mosquitoes. We must be a comical sight in our bug nets and Carhartts to the locals, who wear tank tops and scoff at “wimpy Americans.” We often marvel at how people could ever become so accustomed to the swarms of biting insects that they consciously choose to pass the day at the river in bikinis. The urge to swim, however, is less of a mystery. Until the last couple of days it’s felt like southern California around here.

Allison and Sam weave their way through trees and shrubs to make their way to a terrestrial survey plot, which lies about a 15 minute walk from Orbita. © Becky Tachihara

Daily plunges into the chilly Panteleikha River keep moral high and postpone the inevitable shower. Living on the barge allows for easy swimming access, and for the observation of the tremendous variability in the water. The river at times is placid, at others turbulent. Some early mornings find it mirror-like and tranquil, with fog sitting low along the banks. It is strange to see a river with such a swift current appear so still. Some afternoons the waves are so rough they just about sweep disgruntled field assistants off the gangplank. Now and then the river is visibly divided down the middle, with the dirtier, colder water from the Kolyma River remaining separate from the Panteleikha because of the temperature difference. No matter the weather, the Panteleikha is home.

Dylan and Allison look down at the plot where they will be clipping vegetation samples for the terrestrial survey. © Becky Tachihara

I know I will miss the station when we leave. Siberia is beautiful. Most people picture a frozen, lifeless landscape when they think of Siberia, but this place has much more splendor than it gets credit for. Sometimes I get lost out there among the Larch trees and forget the rest of the world exists. I can understand why researchers are drawn here; not only does this ecosystem play an essential role in the global carbon cycle, but its vibrancy creates a surreal sense of serenity that impresses upon the mind the importance of preserving the arctic.

Mosquitoes swarm on Allison’s shoulder during a trip out into the field for the terrestrial survey. © Becky Tachihara

We all feel that urgency. The changes happening here are caused almost exclusively by the effects of carbon dioxide from outside sources. Anthropogenic activity in the arctic itself is limited. Unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do to stop the warming. All we can do is study the changes in an attempt to understand how they will affect the ecosystem in the future, and share what we learn with those not fortunate enough to visit the arctic themselves. That’s the primary goal of the Polaris Project.

Andy pulls a tree core out of the corer. The cores will be put in paper straws to dry overnight before being mounted, sanded, counted and measured. © Becky Tachihara

I work with the terrestrial team of the Polaris Project. Our goal is to figure out how much carbon is stored above and below ground in this area, because it’s never been inventoried before. This means trying to tally up the total grams of carbon contained in trees, shrubs, mosses and soil within our .2 hectare plots, and then extrapolate our data to apply to the entire landscape using GIS and high resolution satellite images—quite a tall order.

Allison looks at a tree core under a microscope in Orbita to see if it is sanded smoothly enough to being counting the rings. © Becky Tachihara

My project focuses on tree cores. We use an increment borer to core all of the trees on our plots, bring them back to the lab for processing, and measure the distance between each ring. So far we have cored around 200 trees and spent hours gluing, sanding and staring into a microscope. By comparing rings between trees within the same stand, we can see how their growth rates are correlated. This allows us to determine limiting factors for Larch trees in different environmental conditions. Our data is still coming together, but hopefully it will give us a better idea of how these forests are growing (and sequestering carbon) over time. The days remaining are dwindling and we are all scrambling to collect and analyze what we can. A week more isn’t long enough…

A striking landscape greeted us as we came ashore at Duvannyi Yar. The dramatic earthen cones are called baigerakhs, and they are what is left behind after an ice wedge melts away. © Becky Tachihara

“That is bison,” said Sergei Zimov.  “This is horse, this I don’t know, that is rhinoceros, and that is baby mammoth tooth.”

We started trudging up the cliff, and straightaway Mantsa got stuck shin-deep in the mud.  He crawled out of his boots (like alligator) onto harder ground to a chorus of Russian-language ridicule.  The gist of it was that Mantsa, from the dry Genghis-Kahn steppes of the Kalmyk Republic, had never seen mud.  I was glad it wasn’t me stuck in the mud; it might well have been; I don’t know all that much about mud myself.  It was hard going, the ground full of holes and fallen trees hidden under stiff-leaved vegetation, but we attained the top without further incident.

A growing collection of bones sits on the edge of the barge after Polaris members scavenged them from the soils of Duvannyi Yar. Among them is part of a baby mammoth’s jaw, miscellaneous vertebrae and a nearly intact bison skullcap, complete with horns. © Becky Tachihara

Geographical features as exotic as Duvannyi Yar, if any, are probably best absorbed from photographs by those not present to see it for themselves.  For this, Becky’s fine images will serve, while I try to explain how Duvannyi Yar got that way.  What we’re seeing here is an exposed, river-cut cross section of the permafrost that underlies all of the Kolyma lowlands.  The bulk of it consists of fine sediment called Yedoma.  That, like other permafrost words, originates from the Yakutian culture.  But there is some debate among scientists who’ve adopted the terms as to the origin of Yedoma.  Did it flow in from rivers (“alluvial”) or did it blow in as dust on the wind (“Aeolian”)?  Or perhaps from a combination of both with long-decayed vegetable matter mixed in?  It’s very fine stuff, almost grainless, that crumbles in your hand when dry and steals your boots when wet.

Sam and Ludda prepare to hike up over the cliffs looming above the river at Duvannyi Yar. © Becky Tachihara

But the weirdest, most distinctive features of Duvannyi Yar are those point-up conical structures of yedoma, like giant termite mounds, nearly contiguous on the cliff.  Baigerakh (“by-ger-ak”) is the Yakutian/scientific term.  They resulted from the action of ice.  Eons ago water found its way into cracks in the ground and, over successive seasons of freeze and thaw, widened and deepened the openings with the widest part upslope.  The ice acted like giant wedges driving downward into the yedoma.  Indeed, they’re called ice wedges.  Then as the cliff face eroded away from the river, the ice wedges were exposed and fell away or they simply melted.  The yedoma into which the ice had wedged remained as cones—baigerakhs—with their sharp tops pointing upward.  (In common usage by the Russians, “yedoma” refers not solely to the sediment, but to the entire structure as a unity, including the ice wedges.)  A few ice wedges were still visible on the cliff, but the melting is happening rapidly.  “When I was young man,” Sergey told me, “summer temperature often was minus five.  It was common.  Now over last ten years, it does not happen.”  During the last week, the weather had been redolent of Southern California.

Eli and Paul build a pathway of driftwood out to the mouth of the mud stream running out of Duvannyi Yar and into the Kolyma. Without the driftwood, they would be sinking up to their knees in mud. © Becky Tachihara

In some places, the Duvannyi Yar cliffs bow visibly downward almost tangent with the shoreline.  These are remnants of thermokarst lakes, ubiquitous features on the Kolyma floodplain.  They’re formed when water fills natural depressions in the landscape.  The lakes are relatively stable when they form on flat land.  However, where they occur in proximity to the Duvannyi Yar cliffs, their existence is temporal—the cliffs are eroding at some five meters a year.  Eventually, the erosion will breach the lakeshore, spilling its water into the Kolyma, leaving that bowed depression as a remnant.

Laurel stretches out on her stomach to avoid sinking into the mud while she takes a sample from a little mud stream at Duvannyi Yar. © Becky Tachihara

“See here,” Sergei said, poking the forest floor at the crest of the cliff with his shovel.  “Sphagnum moss and lichens.  Grasses cannot grow in this, only trees.  This was not always so.  In Pleistocene times when climate was drier, this was vast grassland full with herbivores.  Great bison, musk oxen, horses, rhinoceros, mammoths, caribou, and predators, wolves and lions.  Twenty, thirty animals per square kilometer.  This we know from bones.  But then humans came onto land.”

A log rests precariously atop a baigerakh at the edge of Duvannyi Yar, overlooking the Kolyma River. © Becky Tachihara

Sergei explained that the Pleistocene megafauna did not go extinct as a result of climatic stress; they survived the Ice Age as well as the shift to a much warmer climate.  They were driven to extinction, he contends, by human predation.  Successive waves of human hunters arrived for the rich pickings with ever more sophisticated weapons fashioned from bone (there is little rock in the region adequate for tool/weapon technology) and killed everything they could.  One would suppose that a single mammoth or bison could feed a band of hunters for a long time, particularly in cold weather.  But Sergey believes that they didn’t kill the herbivores exclusively for food, but also for fat to stoke cooking and warming fires, and sometimes “for fun.”  Further, he makes a sociological step, contending that women played a conclusive if indirect role in megafauna extinction.  “Women like warm hut,” he said, “to make children.”  This led to further predation for fat.  Also, a man’s virile hunting prowess impressed the women, which for obvious reasons encouraged increased predation.  Those motives to hunt and kill led ultimately to extinction, which in turn led to a kind of negative environmental feedback.

Sam holds up a piece of ice chipped off of an exposed ice wedge to look at its layers, which indicate the passage of time. © Becky Tachihara

The density of herbivores—denser, he believes, than today’s Serengeti—had sustained the steppe-like grassland environment.  “See this—“  He knelt by an isolated patch of long grass and pulled up brown, dead grass.  In the absence of herbivores, the previous season’s dead grass choked out new production.  By that progression the grass died off as a direct result of the grass-eater’s human-induced extinction.  The larch forest took over.

Ludda stands in front of one of Duvannyi Yar’s mammoth cliffs of ice and yedoma. (No pun intended, though Ludda did find a mammoth bone during her explorations.) © Becky Tachihara

Sergei led us through swarming mosquitoes past a thermokarst lake the size of a Manhattan block and by a switchback route down the cliff face to the nearly beach-less riverbank—to look for bones.  They were everywhere, a Pleistocene charnel house.  Sergei, Nastia, Kate, and Matt, collected leg bones, ball sockets, vertebra, teeth, and mandibles and tossed them to Max following along in the skiff.  But Sergei Davidoff found the most spectacular artifacts, a bison skullcap with enormous horns still intact and a nearly intact baby mammoth jawbone complete with sad little teeth.

Back on the barge before lunch, I sat alone on the bow and peered at the Duvannyi Yar cliffs thinking about carbon and climate and bones—and their braided metaphorical connection.  Once in unimaginable numbers fantastic animals roamed this region and flourished for eons across severe climatic extremes.  Then they were gone.  Why?  Was it us, as Zimov contends, our magnificent capabilities to build, to invent and our darker but related tendencies to destroy?  Once it was unthinkable that the permafrost could ever thaw; it is no longer.  Once it was unthinkable that the wonderful works of our heads and hands could breed the seeds of our own destruction.  But there it was—billions of tons of ancient carbon, the latent possibility of human misery, waiting for the works of man and their exhaust fumes to release it into the atmosphere….

Sam tosses a handful of dust from Duvannyi Yar into the air. When the yedoma soil dries out, it becomes a very fine dust that can be carried by the wind…or by anyone who walks through it, since it gets into absolutely everything. © Becky Tachihara

No, relinquish the melancholy view, at least until after lunch.  Students and PIs were coming aboard laughing at their own mosquito bites and laughing with Mantsa, who’d gotten stuck thrice more in the mud, as they unpacked more bones onto the deck.

Jorien’s boat came alongside after her morning sampling dissolved organic carbon in that thermokarst lake.  “So what did you learn in your walk?” she asked smiling.

“That it was the women’s fault.”

The morning was cool, still, and buggy after a cold, windy night, the Kolyma glassy with a slight green tint accentuated by the sun.  Ready to go, we stood around in our multi-layered gear, boots, and bug shirts with face masks zipped, while the scientists finished packing their bottles and vials and flasks and measuring devices with acronymic names.

“Is everyone here?  Okay, listen to Nikita tell us about all the ways to get hurt at Duvannyi Yar.”

John shows off his boot after sinking calf-deep into the treacherous mud of Duvannyi Yar. © Becky Tachihara

“Yes, this is dangerous place,” said Nikita gesturing to the green, black, and ice-wedged cliffs away to port.  “You must take it seriously.  Things fall all the time.  You don’t want to be under them.  Plus you can get stuck in mud.  If that happens—“  He demonstrated what to do then by dropping to hands and knees and crawling away.  “Like crocodile.   Never mind boots, leave boots.  Better to lose your boots than your life.”  (As if to illustrate the point, a moose stuck in the mud was decomposing on the riverbank likely after dying a slow miserable death by starvation.)  “Also, if it looks soft and muddy, it probably is.  Don’t walk there.  Walk on vegetation or fallen trees.  What else?”

“Don’t go wandering off by yourself,” Max warned.  “Stay with your group.”  There are a lot of ways to get hurt at Duvannyi Yar.

John plays guitar for a sing-along on the deck of the barge on our first night of travel to Duvannyi Yar. Musical moments are a regular feature of life on the barge; some singing and guitar playing is a great way to unwind at the end of a long day working in the field or labs. © Becky Tachihara

The first visible building at Laeonid’s camp faces out toward the river, adorned with fishing gear, fuel tanks and what looks like an old motor. © Becky Tachihara

Thirty-six hours earlier, a grizzled, hard-working towboat used to transport fish and supplies for outlying fish camps, came alongside the barge; Sergei and Nikita Zimov and the captain rigged for a side-tow, and we got underway by 2300 in bright sun (that never sets this time of year).  It was cold for the first time since we’d arrived on station, and a stiff, steely wind blew the bugs away as we turned off the Panteleikha River to merge the big Kolyma.  So began a happy, loud, and festive night.  Nastya, Nikita’s wife, and Sergei Davidoff, a Russian scientist and co-founder of the Northeast Station, joined us. along with Sergey Zimov’s old friend Laeonid Nalyotov, a fisherman and musician who lives at his camp on the Parshino River, a day’s steam up the Kolyma from the station.  We were mesmerized by his haunting, exotic song about Stalin-era life and death.  While he sang, I was touched not only by the power of the sound like none I had ever heard, but also by the fact of this exquisite, fleeting Polaris Project experience, that here we were, a broad mix of nationalities and life experience floating on a barge up a big Siberian river to a place where Pleistocene bones protrude from permafrost.  What a creative conception it was by its originator, whom people have taken to calling “Papa Max.”  We stayed up way too late.

Fishnets awaiting use hang on a frame standing in the tall grass off to one side of Laeonid’s camp. © Becky Tachihara

Next morning, still eight hours from our destination, we angled off of the Kolyma into the narrower Parshino River.  The towboat driver, with help from Laeonid and Sergey Zimov’s local knowledge, picked his way through the shallows.  Sibilant wind filtered through the larches, and in their lee, the temperature rose to one-layer level.  Suddenly on the starboard side, a little patch of “civilization” appeared.  Laeonid’s fish camp.  The observers, absorbers ashore to witness a fragment of Siberian subsistence, while the stream team ventured off into the woods and the aquatic scientists headed out onto a nearby, white-capped lake in a little skiff to take still more soil and water soil samples.  Before we left the barge, as the Russians were handling shorelines, Nikita translated Laeonid’s admonition, “Don’t approach the dogs.”  Remarkable animals, they were huge, Newfie sized but with thick multi-layer coats bred for the other seasonal extreme, not this one.  By translation, Laeonid told me that in good snow the four dogs can pull a sled with him and three hundred kilos of gear aboard.  He invited me into his house, rustic and weather beaten on the outside, basic but cozy inside, linoleum floors, a bear and wolverine skin akimbo on the papered wall.  I wished we could communicate in terms more informational than pantomime.  I would liked to have heard something about his past and the distinctive choice he must have made many years ago, about the realities of life out here, particularly in winter, and about how in summer he survives these swarms of mosquitoes without going flat nuts.  (Laurel, part of the stream team who went somewhere hellish with John, told me she killed thirty with one slap to her hat, a record to date.)  His helper, a silent man who looked like he was assembled from cable wire seemed not to notice us or the swarm of bloodsuckers orbiting his bare head.  How does one reach that point?

Paul tries to tear off a piece of Laeonid’s dried fish. Laeonid let us take a few fish with us for everyone to try; it tasted a little like beef jerky, but fishier. © Becky Tachihara

Laeonid gill nets whitefish, char, and sturgeon in summer, and in winter he drops bait through augured ice holes.  Old nets were draped over rollers and larch poles, and several battered aluminum skiffs with ancient outboards were hauled up bow first on the riverbank.  A hard life for men, dogs, and boats.  Out in the weeds there was what I took to be a defunct armored personnel carrier and near the back porch the corpses of snowmobiles.  Desiccated whitefish were strung on a wire over the porch.  Take, Laeonid gestured, take.  We did.  We tore off strips with nails and teeth and passed them around.  Good, everyone agreed.  It’s go really well, someone conjectured, with a beer.

An abandoned truck littered with containers and other assorted pieces of metal and wire sits in the grass toward the back of Laeonid’s camp. © Becky Tachihara

A sucker for dogs, I resisted the stupid temptation to approach and examine those coats.  This would be a bad place to get hurt, especially stupid after explicit instructions to stay away from them.  Anyway, it was time to go; Duvannyi Yar was still a long way off against the current.  I shook Laeonid’s leathery hand and thanked him for his hospitality.  I waved at his helper, who pretended not to see me.

A crowd gathers on the front of the barge as we set off for Duvannyi Yar. Anya escaped to the roof for a better view. © Becky Tachihara

“Are there any questions?” Max asked the assembled team on the bow.  “No?… We’ve got a beautiful day for it.  Okay, let’s go.”

Eirik and Jorien load gear into an inflatable boat they will take out on the lake. They will paddle to the middle and then take a variety of water and sediment samples. © Becky Tachihara

My initial plans for my science research project here was to look at the biodiversity in the lakes, focusing on the upper trophic levels. After going swimming in the Panteleikha River during the second day of our stay, this plan was scrapped. The water was full of organic material and I couldn’t see my own hand when I held it approximately 0.5 meters below the surface. Questions started to form in my head and slowly new ideas for my project were coalescing.

Will primary production by phytoplankton be light-limited by this organic matter, or will the waters be more productive with increasing amounts of nutrients flowing into them? With increasing permafrost thaw, previously unavailable carbon pools are being introduced to lakes through terrestrial run-off.  If the carbon that is being flushed into the lakes here is labile and ready for consumption by heterotrophic organisms, this may result in increasing CO₂ concentration in the water column. When this CO₂ does not get recycled by phytoplankton in the lakes, it is more rapidly being evaded to the atmosphere. Hopefully, I’ll get some interesting results by comparing lakes that receive inflow from soils that contain organic matter of Pleistocene and Holocene origins. By measuring chlorophyll levels, organic carbon, biological oxygen demand, oxygen content and pH at varying depths of the water column, I hope to attain a good picture of how these lakes are differentiating themselves, but also in comparison to lakes where I am from, which is at the same longitude as Cherskiy but where there is no permafrost.

As they float, Jorien and Eirik check the read outs from one of the instruments they use to gather data from the lake. © Becky Tachihara

Spending the days out on the lakes is a great way to take in the beautiful scenery that surrounds us, and to escape the most dense mosquito swarms. My advisor Jorien has studied in Sweden for five years, so most of the communication being done on the lakes is usually a fine mixture of Swedish and Norwegian. In the barge, there are several nationalities represented and the conversations are usually in English or Russian. As the only Norwegian, it is very interesting for me to meet and get to know people from different cultures. The feel of the group is great, and we are having a lot of fun while at the same time working on our projects. I think this mixture of cultural diversity and positive atmosphere is creating a great platform for doing great science!

Shuchii Lake is visible through vibrant green vegetation after about a 10-minute walk from Orbita. © Becky Tachihara

I must not forget to mention the food. Having grown up in a home where moose always is a favorite meal for various festivities and celebrations, it is fantastic to be on the barge and having it served to us in different shapes and forms by our incredible chef Valentina!

Across the floodplain, mountain can be seen rising in the distance. © Becky Tachihara

What would happen if history were repeated itself? Last year I was selected for an internship in Hawaii and it was canceled because of the lack of funding. However, it did not stop me from writing the essay and asking for a letter of recommendation. I decided to throw myself out to the unknown and work with different people from different cultures in a new place that is not even mentioned in my courses at the university.

My friends started to ask me what I was doing for the summer. For some reason, before I had even been accepted, I started answering that I was going to Russia. One day, I came home early from the university and it finally happened. I checked my email, and there was one from Max Holmes (the director of the Polaris Project). Butterflies invaded my stomach and an anxious wave rippled through my whole body. After reading the email, I started to jump with excitement. I called everybody that helped me with the applying process and my close relatives.

The first Puerto Ricans in Cherskiy. © Becky Tachihara

I wrote to Max accepting the offer and waited until my departure. Besides the other Puerto Rican student, Michael Melendez, the first person that I talked to was Bill (one of the PIs). This is his fourth year in the program and he told me that it is a life changing experience. He was completely right.

Have you ever felt that you are probably the first from your country to reach a place? That was the most exciting feeling that I have ever felt in my life, knowing that we carry with us the pride of being “boricuas ” (Puerto Ricans) and the responsibility of leaving behind a good image of our nation.  Since arriving in Cherskiy we received dozens of questions about our country, our status with United States, culture, language, and even our passport. This is interesting, because each Puerto Rican has a unique answer to those questions, but this demonstrates the inquiry, interaction and cultural tolerance that predominate “The Polaris Project.” I will never forget the moment in Red Square in Moscow when Juan Carlos and I wanted to take a picture with our flag and suddenly everyone in the group joined us in the picture. That picture shows more than just a group of people.  It shows that in Polaris we all are a family that helps each other, regardless of nationality, origin or language. We are twenty-two scientists, but we are one Polaris.

This was the first whole group photo of the Polaris Project 2011 participants – Puerto Rican flag and all.

Travelling:
If I’m doing my math correctly – and there is a reasonably high probability that I’m not, considering how many time zones we crossed – we spent close to 30 hours actually in airplanes flying most of the way around the world. My route began at the Bellingham airport, and from there we went to Seattle, then Washington D.C. and Moscow. We took a break from airports in Moscow, staying overnight and even getting a chance to go see Red Square. Moscow is a beautiful city; I’m excited to be able to see more of it on the return trip.

Allison lounges on our carry-on luggage while we waited for our flight to Yakutsk from the Vnukovo airport in Moscow. © Becky Tachihara

The following day we were off again for our final two flights: Moscow to Yakutsk and Yakutsk to Cherskiy. I don’t remember most of either of those flights because I was asleep for most of them, but the scenery was beautiful, and on the Yakutsk to Cherskiy flight, Kate somehow managed to get the captain to let us all up to take a look inside the cockpit. That was definitely a travel highlight I will remember forever…and there’s no way that would ever happen in the U.S., which makes it even cooler in my opinion.

Arrival and first impressions:
When we finally arrived in Cherskiy and made our way out to the Northeast Science Station, everyone was exhausted from travelling, but so excited to finally be in Siberia that it didn’t even matter. I remember looking around, almost dazed, thinking, “I can’t believe I’m really here…” From that moment on, things have been moving at warp speed.

Students and PIs talk about their plans for the day before heading out to collect data and samples in the field or do analysis work in the labs. © Becky Tachihara

We got all of our things moved into the barge – yes, we are living on a barge on a river in the Siberian Arctic; be jealous – and even as midnight approached after days of non-stop travelling, the barge was buzzing with conversation. Students and PIs (primary investigators – the professors and professional scientists who lead the Polaris trip) sat in the barge’s common area discussing science, language, various qualities of Russian beer and anything else that came to mind. As tired as we all were, this was the start of an adventure that will stick with us for the rest of our lives, and we wanted to get going.

Science and swimming and bugs, oh my!
As our second day in Siberia dawned – metaphorically I suppose, since the sun doesn’t actually set – and we were all finishing up the breakfast prepared for us by our fantabulous cook, Valentina, the students were asked to define the projects that we would be working on for the next three weeks. As the day wore on, words like “limiting nutrients,” “DOM,” (dissolved organic matter) and “striation,” were dropped into conversation more and more frequently. Now that we have been here for a week, the science flying around is almost palpable.

Anya fills a one-liter bottle with water from a stream called Y4. The “Y” stands for yedoma, The “Y” in Y4 stands for yedoma, a Russian term for the very old (tens-of-thousands of years), thick, carbon rich soil over which the stream flows. © Becky Tachihara

Every day after breakfast, group disperses to various field locations and labs where they will work on their projects. We have people studying lakes, streams, trees, soil and everything in between, and I have been trying to follow a different group to a different place every day so I can get a good feel for what everyone has going on. The science people are doing here is fascinating, and I can’t wait until I can start interviewing people and begin to put together a story.

Ludda gives Eli a back rub in Orbita while waiting for the PIs to give a lesson on how to use some lab equipment. © Becky Tachihara

Outside of the hard work everyone is doing for their projects, we still have time for a little fun. We have been playing board games or having sing-alongs or just hanging out and talking every night when people come back to the barge, and in the afternoons, we usually go swimming. Yes, I did say swimming. In the Arctic. I feel that many of you are fairly confused by this point. Believe it or not, it is actually quite warm here, and a dip in the Panteleikha (the river where the barge is moored) is very refreshing after a long day of hot, sweaty, buggy fieldwork.

The one thing that really has the ability to put a damper on everything we are doing here is the mosquito population. On cooler, windier days the bugs are not too bad, but if it warms up and the wind stops blowing, the mosquitoes will descend upon us like a buzzing, biting cloud of misery. (For a fuller description, check out Dallas’ journal on this subject.)

Sam Dunn collects soil cores from terrestrial survey plots. In the lab, he will test the samples and use the data for his student project. © Becky Tachihara

But even the bugs cannot put a damper on our sprits for too long. Just the fact that we are here in Siberia on a once in a lifetime journey doing groundbreaking science overrides any short-term discomfort from heat or bugs. This place is like nothing I have ever experienced, and I can already tell that this month is going to go by much too quickly.

After 3 days and 19 time changes, we land over the 4 km wide Kolyma River and onto the dirt runway of the Cherskiy airport. After hauling and rearranging our dozens of giant bags dozens of times, we only have one more short bus ride our final destination.

A barge floats on the Panteleikha River, its hull dulled red by Artic sun and snow.  The faded color is understandable – the seasons are relentless: twenty-four hours of sun in the summer, twenty-four hours of darkness in the winter. Thirteen people sleep aboard: 4 primary investigators and 9 students.  I have the privilege of bunking in the self-proclaimed international room with Eirik from Norway and Mantsa from Russia.  Our team has more nationalities — England, Netherlands – forming a collaborative effort to enhance the understanding of arctic climate change.

Our home here in Siberia is a barge on the Panteleikha River. This is where we will eat, sleep and relax after long days in the field or lab doing science. © Becky Tachihara

Up the steep dirt path, the Northeast science station forms a small compound. A dozen buildings building sprawl onsite, but we occupy only a few.  The most iconic is Orbita.  A massive satellite dish rests on the roof of that octagonal building, on concrete stilts to keep from sinking into the permafrost.  I am doubtful about the explanation of its purpose: broadcasting television to the people during the earlier times (how Russians refer to the USSR).

On the way to Orbita, I pass a derelict wooden church on the high riverbank.  It is barely taller than me with wooden walls, a green metal roof, and a steeple. I understand why it was built there; the church overlooks a stunning and sacred place. An overflow channel of the Kolyma forms a confluence with the smaller Panteleikha River. The milky coffee-colored water mixes with the darker blue of the Panteleikha. Dissolved organic carbon – an obscure concept – becomes clear.

Organic carbon is a phrase thrown around the barge almost as much as laughter.  Although it’s significance does not need explanation to the group, brown water is the reason why we are here.  Organic matter is frozen in the soil beneath the ground. Heat seeps into the soil as summer arrives every year with its never-ending daylight. This deepening thaw depth is called the active layer.  Will the active layer increase over time with arctic warming?  How will this increased thaw depth affect the amount and type of carbon in the watershed?

Organic matter is the carbon-based remnants of photosynthesis.  The molecules can be tens of thousands of years, stored in the frozen soil.  As thaw depth increases, so does the age of the organic matter.  Previously locked in the ice, this carbon is released into an active system. This vintage carbon forms a buffet for microbes who dine and exhale methane or carbon dioxide, further exacerbating the warming which created its initial release.

This place, with its foundation of Pleistocene (the time period before the last ice age, around 40,000 years ago) permafrost, is a science playground.  We divide our efforts in to two ambitious categories.  The aquatic survey gathers data quantifying how much carbon is flowing through rivers, lakes, and streams.  The terrestrial survey does the same by extracting tree cores and combusting plants to derive out how much carbon is stored in vegetation.

To gather data for his project, Matt pieced together an apparatus he calls “the milk crate of science.” Using water samples from the milk crate, he will measure dissolved oxygen in order to determine microscopic photosynthetic activity. © Becky Tachihara

By combining these surveys, the Polaris Project attempts a complete understanding Kolyma’s watershed, the sixth largest river in the arctic. The project’s lead scientist, Max Holmes, wrote a paper showing the six rivers in the Arctic watershed, including the Kolyma, have been increasing in flow over the last 80 years.  Our measurements attempt to understand what will happen as the flow of the river increases the amount of carbon in the water. Carbon is food.  When there is more in the river, microscopic organisms eat more (respire).  However, just like us, microbes prefer food that is easy to eat.  This ease of eating is called lability. The students, under the guidance of the primary investigators, created experiments to understand if organic carbon will breakdown en route to the ocean.

We are here in rugged and remote Cherskiy to understand how labile the carbon is as the weather warms and more permafrost thaws. Where the hot day never ends and rarely drops below 25 C, a barge full of excited and creative scientists tempt and tease out information about climate change where it is visually happening.  However, visual evidence (despite its artistic merit) is anecdotal.  Our project’s aim is to quantify this release of carbon from the thawing soil.

I hope to continually update this blog to inform the public of the fascinating feedbacks and information we are obtaining in the field.  The updates may be periodic.  We have taken to calling our connection the “inter-nyet”.  More importantly, temptations — Russian cooking from our outstanding chef Valentina, and sample procurement and processing — beckon.

Eli grins as he stands up after falling in a hole on our hike up Y4. We had to push our way through fairly dense undergrowth, which obscured the uneven ground and made tripping highly likely. © Becky Tachihara

For my project, I am comparing how different Yedoma streams are from Floodplain streams in biological activity (the microbial community). To assess this I am measuring the dissolved oxygen, pH, temperature, specific conductivity, dissolved organic carbon (DOC), biological oxygen demand (BOD), ammonium, nitrate, and phosphate in the water. It sounds like a bunch of measurements but I can collect a lot of them using a YSI probe which I stick in the water to get measurements. For the other tests I collect two liters of water at each site to bring back to the laboratory.

Eli pours water samples from a nearby stream into bottles in preparation for running a biological oxygen demand (BOD) test, which measures how much oxygen is dissolved in a water sample. Eli said he will use the BOD data to find and compare microbial activity in different samples. © Becky Tachihara

To collect my samples I bushwhack my way downstream from the lakes and collect water samples along the way.…and then there are the mosquitoes.  I was told before I left that the mosquitoes are the worst that they have ever seen. Still, nothing could have prepared me for how many mosquitoes there are. Along the streams, the mosquitoes are loud enough that it makes it difficult to talk to someone only a few feet away. We play a game to see who kills the most mosquitoes with one swat of their hand. I believe the record so far is upwards of twenty.  0.o

Yesterday’s trek to collect samples was demoralizing, because hiked across the shrubbery, fighting mosquitoes along the way, only to be able to collect data and samples at two of the four locations because the YSI broke. Today, I left early with Anya Suslova and Becky Tachihara to recollect the data from yesterday. It was a success and we were even accompanied by the local dog, Polaris.

Eli and Polaris walk back to the barge after a day doing field work at Y4. © Becky Tachihara

Afterwards we jumped in the river for a refreshing swim, and now I am preparing for another delicious lunch.

Until next time, cheers!

“Don’t scratch the bites,” someone says, “They’ll go away.”  Sure.

Mosquitoes swarmed around the bottom of Eli’s pack as we hiked up and down Y4, a nearby stream, collecting samples and data. The “Y” in Y4 stands for yedoma, a Russian term for the very old (tens-of-thousands of years), thick, carbon rich soil over which the stream flows. © Becky Tachihara

I’ve faced the bloodsuckers in the Florida Keys and the Yucatan, in the North Woods and Newfoundland.  I thought they were very bad.  I was flat wrong.  These are wimpy, effete bug environments, the mosquito minor leagues.  Siberia is the bug big time.  I’ll bet that the single largest volume of biomass in Siberia has six legs, whining wings and proboscises frantic to puncture.  The growing season in the Arctic is very short; the mosquitoes need to suck while the sun shines.  We’ve been wondering why we see so few birds around here.  It appears to be excellent bird environment.  After a few days on site, I’ve come to suspect that birds were driven out some time around the Holocene climatic optimum for want of Deet.

A tube of bug repellant sits on the floor of Orbita as people get ready to head out into the field. © Becky Tachihara

“You get used to them after a while,” says someone else.  Maybe, but not before anemia sets in.

And forget Deet.  This stuff can eat holes in Gore-Tex and certain kinds of plastic; Siberian mosquitoes laugh it off.  You hear stories about the Porcupine River caribou herd on the North Slope of Alaska stampeding in panic, some members smothering to death when their nostrils clog with mosquitoes; there are no caribou around here.

I have utmost respect for the Polaris Project scientists, particularly the aquatic team, who venture almost daily into the wet woods to sample carbon and things in tiny overgrown streams.  I went across the river yesterday morning in a skiff to pick up the team.  John and his intrepid students emerged muddy and sweaty from the dwarf willow forest geared up like toxic waste workers with several thousand mosquitoes clinging to their bug shirts and hoods waiting to find flesh.  It was a bug-infested hellhole (BIHH).  It wasn’t just me; everyone said so.

As we hiked up Y4, bugs swarmed around us and tried to bite everywhere they landed. Luckily, I was wearing my rain pants so they couldn’t get through. © Becky Tachihara

This is not an easy place to do science.  The barge, where the students and three PIs live, is rustic, small, but comfortable.   The food is first rate.  Valentina, our chef, is brilliant and deeply appreciated.   But the Northeast Science Station is a long way from anywhere.  Everything except the moose meat (with which Valentina does wonders) has to be shipped in at great cost.  If you need something that isn’t here, you better be able to jury rig it.  And though we tend to joke about them, bugs are a fact of Arctic life.  Without them, in my own opinion, this place would be paradisiacal; with the little winged miseries, a walk on a windless evening can make one want to whimper.  But no member of the Polaris Project seems daunted.  On the contrary, all are delighted as far as I can tell to be here.  However, there are few such projects, and Arctic science is always limited by cost, by logistics, and the very vastness of the region.  So this is important work, sampling terrestrial and aquatic aspects of this under-sampled region in the poor heat-beleaguered Arctic.  Yet this scene at the riverbank illustrates certain rigorous aspects of Polaris Project field science and perhaps Arctic work more generally.

Donning his protective bug shirt, Sam waits to record field data from the terrestrial survey. © Becky Tachihara

Over lunch today, I mentioned to Ludda and Becky the BIHH and its victims I’d witnessed yesterday on the riverbank.  They were unimpressed.

“Have you been to Y-4?”  Asked Ludda, referring to the so-designated stream nearby.

“Uh, no.”  I knew what they were going to say.

“It’s worse, way worse,” said Becky.

They described how to get there, and I went in the interest of research.  I figured that if they could stand it, so could I.  I was flat wrong.  Fled.

As part of the terrestrial survey, students measure the diameter of trees at “breast height” (1.4 meters high) using a special measuring tape called a DBH (diameter breast height) tape. © Becky Tachihara

It’s hard to believe we haven’t even been here for a week yet – it already feels like we have well-established routines each day, even though each day has been slightly different.  Everyone seems very comfortable and at home here.  I’m constantly impressed by everyone’s enthusiasm in both their own and other people’s projects.  There is a genuine curiosity and interest in learning and experiencing as much as possible while we are here – not only about the science but also about each other and the language and culture of the area.  I’m really looking forward to taking trips to Duvannyi Yar, Pleistocene Park, and the ocean (hopefully), but am also really enjoying the everyday conversations, excursions, and habits.  I have already learned so much and couldn’t ask for a better group of people to be with here in Siberia!

Another tool for the terrestrial team is the densiometer, which looks like a small round mirror in a box and is used to measure how dense the tree canopy is in a given location. © Becky Tachihara

Dylan uses a metal pole to check the depth of the active layer, a layer of thawed soil above the permafrost. © Becky Tachihara

A bus ride and a short hike brought us to the top of a small mountain named Rodinka. From there we had an amazing 360 degree view of the surrounding landscape. © Becky Tachihara

The great ice-sheet glaciers that during Pleistocene times subsumed and scoured most of the Arctic and much of northern North America and Europe, spared this region of Siberia.  Here over eons, trees, shrubs, and grasses, all manner of local vegetation, lived and died and, with the soil in which they grew, accumulated layer upon layer.  Below the surface, insulated from the radiative influence of summer sunlight, these earth materials froze and, undisturbed by the rasping passage of ice, remained permanently present and frozen.

We shouldn’t visualize permafrost simply as uniformly frozen soil and detritus, like that in a peat bog, but as a conglomeration of stuff certainly including organic soil but also silt, dust, minerals, rocks—and great chunks of ice.  But if you didn’t know it was down there, you’d never imagine on a hot afternoon that you were walking atop frozen ground.  You can’t see permafrost because a film of soil that thaws in summer and refreezes every winter—called the active layer—covers the permanently frozen material.  In this region of Siberia, the active layer is one to two meters deep.  Its depth determines the nature of the soil, the quantity of water available and, therefore, the nature of the vegetation able to take root.  The relatively deep active layer in Siberia allows the boreal forest (covering fully eleven percent of Earth’s land surface) to flourish.  In most of the glaciated regions of the Arctic, the active layer is too shallow and/or too dry for trees to grow.  Directly beneath the active layer lies an icy “transition zone,” formed during a period of maximum warming in the Late Holocene, separates the active layer from the more stable, nascent, and deeply frozen area below.  After this broad, simple description of permafrost in Siberia, let’s look at that second point—the potential threat to our climate, the carbon bomb.

Sam Dunn measures a soil core he will later test in the lab for things such as moisture content and microbial activity. © Becky Tachihara

The authors, including Sergei Zimov, of a September 2008 paper in GeoScience estimate the total soil carbon in the Arctic circumpolar permafrost to be 1,672 petagrams.  A single petagram equals one billion metric tons.  That breathtaking number is probably an underestimation, the authors say, due to various factors including a scarcity of data. But we needn’t quibble.  Give or a take a few hundred billion metric tons, that estimate is more than double the total pool of atmospheric carbon.  As average annual temperatures climb in the Arctic, the once-frozen soil will be exposed to the air.  What will happen then?  The short answer is, no one knows for sure, but it doesn’t bode well for the Arctic or for those of us living to the south.

However, we can say that no arc in nature’s great circular systems is independent of the other pieces of the system.  Change inevitably produces feedbacks that reverberate throughout the system.  For eons, all those petagrams of carbon have been locked in ice, unavailable to the environment; but here comes the warming and things begin to change in short order, just as a frozen chicken quickly changes when you remove it from the freezer.

It stands to simple reason that in a warming regime the active layer will thicken, deepen.  The physical result of this will depend on a couple of factors related to the local topography and the quantity of water produced by the thawing.  For instance, if active-layer thawing occurs on a hillside, then the melt water will flow downslope, leaving the organic material high and dry and exposed to the atmosphere—and to the microbes that begin chomping on it.  Doing so, they respire carbon dioxide, which is then outgassed into the atmosphere.  But what of the melt water that has flowed downslope?  It, too, is carrying carbon that has to go somewhere.  The carbon-rich material will find its way into the aquatic system, eventually into the Kolyma River and perhaps be borne all the way to the ocean.  And en route it will inevitably be consumed by bacteria and other carbon eaters, all respiring fresh carbon dioxide into our atmosphere.

The Arctic often conjures images of snow and ice, but the landscape we are exploring is instead covered with vibrant green, lush vegetation. © Becky Tachihara

In the opposite scenario, if the thawing occurs over a depression in the landscape, then the melt water forms a pond or a lake, and the carbon-rich material, hitherto unavailable in its frozen state, sinks to the bottom.  In this oxygen-less state, microbial activity still occurs, but instead of producing carbon dioxide, the microbes produce methane, which as we’ve said elsewhere is twenty-one times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.  The methane resides at the bottom of the pond until it produces pressure in the sediment, which in turn generates bubbles, just as boiling water generates bubbles.  These then float to the surface and pop in the air, releasing fresh stocks of methane to do its greenhouse work.  Ebullition is the fancy term for this bubbling, and we’ll hear more about it later, because it’s responsible for ninety-five percent of the methane emissions from lakes.

Let’s let these two scenarios by which permafrost thawing contributes to increased greenhouse-gas emissions serve for now as an introduction to the subject.  It will come up again and again.  Later in the month we’ll tow the barge upriver to Duvannyi Yar.  There where the Kolyma has eroded high, steep cliffs we’ll be able to see instead of merely imagine a cross section of permafrost and its physical features.  But by way of introduction to the problem, we should also mention one other pertinent feedback mechanism—snow—that will likely exacerbate active-layer thawing.  Most climate models agree that global warming will generate more moisture in the atmosphere, which will in turn enhance high-latitude snowfall.  Snow cover acts to insulate the permafrost from the cold air, thus preventing the active layer from entirely freezing in winter cycle.

“Hand waving” is the scientists’ phrase for alarmist overstatement.  No Polaris Project scientist would refer to the global climate threat from permafrost thawing as hand waving.  It is no overstatement to say that there are very few mechanisms in nature that are capable—on short timescales—of transferring huge stocks of carbon from the land into the atmosphere.  Permafrost thawing heads the short list.

(I owe thanks for their help to PIs Jorien Vonk, Andy Bunn, John Schade, and Paul Mann.)

Aerial view of the lake-studded Siberian landscape. © Becky Tachihara

“Here” is 68.7 degrees North latitude by 161.3 degrees East longitude, over 120 miles above the Arctic Circle, near where the Panteleikha River joins the Kolyma.  Max Holmes, our chief scientist, metaphorically equates the flow of rivers to that of blood in the human body.  Just as doctors can learn the state of a person’s health by measuring blood chemistry, scientists can measure river chemistry to determine the state of the river and the watershed it drains.   There are four larger rivers than the Kolyma by volume of transport in the Siberian Arctic, all of which empty into the Arctic Ocean.  But the Kolyma is the largest river in the Arctic (and so the world) that flows exclusively over permafrost.  This matters a lot, since the central scientific purpose of our journey to Siberia is to measure the transport of carbon from the land via the river to the ocean.  It sounds simple said that way.

Map of the Kolyma River region. © Becky Tachihara

It would be handy if carbon in all its forms washed straightforwardly into the Kolyma River and then flowed cooperatively downstream past the Northeast Science Station to be measured by our scientists waiting with the big-river version of a syringe to extract samples for analysis.  Then after a few years of measurements to factor out seasonal and other natural variations, scientists could tell us whether or not the permafrost was stable and all that carbon stored therein was safe from degradation and subsequent exposure to the atmosphere.  But like much else in natural science, it’s not that simple.

The big river has multiple tributaries all of which transport carbon, and these are fed in turn by progressively smaller tributaries until we get down to trickling forest streams each transporting carbon toward the Kolyma.  It would be far easier and simpler to measure the system if scientists could ignore the tributaries on the grounds that they all combine somewhere upstream ultimately to flow into the Kolyma thence past the station where our scientists wait to measure its carbon and other chemical transport.  The trouble is this method is simplistic, because various processes transform the carbon en route to the big river.  Bacteria feed on the carbon in the streams, producing carbon dioxide, which is then “outgassed” into the atmosphere.  So our student scientists need to tromp deep into the larch forest, never mind the mosquito swarms, to sample and analyze stream water if they are to understand the aquatic processes.  That also sounds simple.  You just pull on your boots, bug shirts, and head nets and go collect your water samples for later analysis back in the labs.  The trouble is the aquatic system, though vitally important, is only one arc in the carbon cycle.  We’ll still need also to measure the standing stocks of carbon in the terrestrial environment, in trees and in soil in order to understand how carbon moves through the entire watershed on its way to tidewater.

The Kolyma River. © Becky Tachihara

Nature loves circles.  Things that go around and around conserve mass and energy.  The ultimate scientific objective is to understand the cycles in the ocean, on land, and in the atmosphere in their entirety and, further, to understand how the cycles are braided together.   (For instance, scientists discovered global warming only when, during the 20^th century, they began to communicate across disparate disciplines of oceanography, astronomy, botany, biology, etc.)   However, given the complexity and the variations in the carbon cycles, scientists need to sort of disassemble the unity they all recognize to exist and specialize in a particular segment of the whole.  Our principal investigators (PIs,) leaders of the Polaris Project, specialize individually in river, stream, soil, lake, and forest ecology, but they probably wouldn’t object if we say that what unifies their work is a focus on watershed ecology.  Further, we could say that they and the students they mentor seek to understand the present state of the environment in order to understand how it’s changing and perhaps how it will change in the future.  That’s a pretty good definition of the Polaris Project itself.

Hiking through the Siberian landscape. © Becky Tachihara

*                     *                  *

To most people unfamiliar with it, the “Arctic” suggests constant cold, even ice, but that’s far too monochromatic in fact.  Though this region of northeast Siberia lies beyond the Arctic circle, it’s climate is typically continental, characterized by seasonal extremes, as opposed to coastal climates moderated by ocean influence.  It’s a gorgeous day, cloudless, clear, and almost hot.  The fine morning breeze that riffled through the larch tree branches with a sound like flowing water has lightened this afternoon, and the mosquitoes are taking advantage of the calm.  From the hill above the river where the red-hull barge, home to our thirteen students, is moored, you can see forever in all directions across the green and watery floodplain.  It’s a gorgeous sight.  All looks well from this vantage point, an environment in sublime balance.  But it’s not in balance.  The Arctic is out of joint.  Any literate, aware person knows that.  But scientists, professional skeptics, don’t speak in such language.  They need to put numbers to the changes.  They need to measure the present before they would presume to predict the future.  That’s why we’ve traveled halfway around the world to the Northeast Science station.

The internet connection was down last night but is up this morning. We hope that by Wednesday we’ll have more reliable connections and the students can start sharing their thoughts and pictures. More soon.

Yesterday we toured Red Square, and I think it’s safe to say we were all pretty impressed. The architecture was stunning, the weather couldn’t have been better, and the people-watching was excellent. We took pictures in front of Saint Basil’s Cathedral, the Kremlin and Lenin’s tomb. I would love to spend more time in Moscow, even though a coffee here costs over eight dollars. The food at our “hotel-like structure,” despite looking somewhat unappetizing, has been delicious (particularly the mystery meat puffs!). And I’ve been told that the food on the barge far exceeds what we’ve already experienced.

Earlier today we had a brainstorming session for project ideas that got everyone thinking science. This may be the coolest thing I have ever done, and the really good stuff hasn’t even started yet.

Next blog post will come from the station!!

(The travels so far have been uncommonly smooth. The only significant bump was when the St. Olaf contingent waited in vain for their bags after our all night flight from Washington DC. Those bags had never left the airport in Minnesota. However, 24 hours later the bags are all accounted for.)

The students this year are fanstastic. We’ve been discussing science in small groups and planning the work we’ll do in Cherskiy. The students are eager to begin and we are all eager to have our travel done. It’s exciting to be embarking on the fourth straight season of work on the Kolyma. Our ambitions and expectations are very high for the research we will do over the next three weeks.

Eastward ho!

If this is "no bugs" then what do "severe bugs" look like?

Nikita just emailed me about an, as of yet, unsuccessful search for the rubber boots I left in Cherskiy. I have a back up pair of slightly shorter boots, so I can bring those. Not a big deal and I expect I’ll find my tall boots in a random Polaris bag once I get there. But then, Nikita casually mentioned at the end of the email that the mosquitoes this year are “as severe as they can be.” I’m not sure what that even means especially when he mentioned that over the last few summers there have been essentially no mosquitoes by his standards. I’m not a bug wimp by any normal American measure. I’ve been working and recreating in buggy country for years. But I had, until this point, considered the bugs we faced on the Polaris Project to be at the varsity level. Now we go pro. Maybe I should start blood doping?

Zimov shows Tyler Pleistocene grass roots perserved in the permafrost

We’ve visited the park every year we’ve been in Cherskiy but this year we plan more intense research on the grazed versus ungrazed areas; monitoring changes to soil carbon as well as associated nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus. Seeing the Pleistocene grassland and imagining the landscape is a sobering experience that I tried to describe two years ago in a NY Times piece about the Polaris Project. It’s tough. It’s a reminder that amazing things happen in Siberia and that I’m lucky to be a scientist on the forefront of such a timely issue. Eastward ho!

Grasses replacing forest in Pleistocene Park

Let’s start with size.  Running north-to-south from the Kara Sea to Kazakhstan, the Ural Mountains separate Europe form Asia.  Likewise, they separate “European Russia,” including Moscow and the other major cities, from Siberia.  Siberia then sprawls east all the way to the Pacific Ocean—some 3,000 miles, across eight time zones, fully one-twelfth of Earth’s surface.  Larger than the contiguous United States and most of Europe combined, its sheer land area defies comprehension.

From Moscow to Cherskiy

Siberia is bordered in the south by Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and China.  This southern sliver of Siberia, on the Eurasian Steppe, is relatively well populated.  A string of towns with barely pronounceable names hugs the tracks of the Trans-Siberian Railway, which originates in Moscow and ends at Vladivostok on the Sea of Japan.  But this, the rolling grasslands of the steppes, is not the Siberia of popular imagination and nowhere near our destination.  That Siberia lies north and east, and judging from the map, everything changes north of the tracks.  I see no towns, no roads.  Therefore, the great Siberian rivers, the Ob, Yenisei, or Lena, might afford the best route north.  They all flow that way.  As the traveler drifts northward on any of these rivers, he would soon see the steppes give way to the world’s largest forest, the taiga, which stretches across the entire width of Siberia and north to near the Arctic Circle.  Beyond the Arctic Circle, the climate prohibits trees, and a new environment, the tundra, takes over.  Both the taiga and the tundra ride atop permafrost, which in some places is 1,500 meters deep.

Up here, almost nothing of man’s modern hand interrupts the patterns of nature.  This is so because the continental climate is inhuman in its extremes, and because permafrost, with it annual cycles of freeze and thaw, does not welcome man’s structures. But here at the irregular southern fringe of the tundra, the traveler has still not reached the top of Siberia.  There are many hundreds of kilometers of lakes and streams, and bogs still to cross before, finally, the traveler reaches the shore-fast ice at the edge of the Arctic Ocean.

So given the size and ecological diversity, it made little sense for me to tell my friend I was going to “Siberia.”  I should have said we were heading to a region of northeast Siberia called Yakutia, to an isolated science station on the banks of the Kolyma River.  And I would have done so except that at the time I had never heard of Yakutia or the Kolyma River, not until our Chief Scientist, Max Holmes, pointed to them on a wall map in his office at the Woods Hole Research Center.

Lab buildings at the Northeast Science Station

On July 1^st, twenty-two of us, including fourteen undergraduate scientists from American, Norwegian, and Russian colleges, several faculty, and a writer will travel to Moscow.  After a jet-lagged tour of the city sights, we’ll fly six hours east to Yakutsk, thence north several hundred miles to the Northeast Science Station, run by Sergey Zimov, about whom we’ll hear much more.   I’ll go along (quite willingly); I’m the writer.  I’ll post to the Polaris Project website daily essays about the science, the environment, and of course the young scientists who will have the privilege of living for a month (aboard a river barge) deep in the very environment they seek scientifically to understand.

The project’s central scientific objective is to understand the carbon cycle.  We’ll delve more deeply in the weeks to come, but for now let’s describe the carbon cycle as the biogeochemical exchange of carbon among plants, soil, the atmosphere, freshwater lakes, streams, rivers, and the oceans.  The student scientists will devise the means and pursue projects to measure arcs of the cycle as reflected in lakes, in the river and its tributaries, on land, and in the local biodiversity.  And when they return home, the students will present their findings and their personal experiences to their peers and the public in various venues.  The project’s secondary objectives are to engage students in Arctic research and, equally valuable, to spread the word about the Arctic.

There are no happy words coming out of the Arctic.  The famous and outspoken climate scientist Mark Serreze put it baldly: “The Arctic is screaming.”  The climate has already changed in the Arctic.  What that means for the future of the Arctic environment—and for the rest of us—remains to be seen, and perhaps will be revealed by the next generation of scientists, one or two of whom might have been inspired by Polaris Project fieldwork.  To study the carbon cycle in the Arctic is to study climate and climate change.  However, what I’d like to call the Arctic emergency only generally answers the reasonable question, why travel halfway around the world to study carbon?  Isn’t carbon everywhere?

It is, and the carbon budget is global in scope.  The Kolyma River watershed, however, is especially important for Earth’s climate future.  Unlike most of the rest of the Arctic, this region remained un-glaciated during the last ice age, which is to say that the Pleistocene Ice Sheet did not scour away the soil and everything else down to the very bedrock.  Here, as a result, the permafrost is extraordinarily deep.  When trees and plants die on the surface of the land, bacteria go to work on them, and the byproduct of the resulting decomposition is carbon dioxide (CO₂).  When similar bacterial decomposition occurs beneath the surface, without oxygen, the result is methane (CH₄).  Methane is a greenhouse gas twenty-one times more powerful than CO₂.  As long as the permafrost remains frozen, the atmosphere is safe from the methane.  However, there are sound indications that the permafrost is thawing.  The Kolyma River watershed is a potential climate bomb.

Permafrost oozes into the Kolyma River at Duvannyi Yar

I’ve been reading some Russian history and books about Siberia by good travel writers.  I’ve studied maps, looked at fine photographs by Chris Linder from previous iterations of the Polaris Project, and read a bevy of technical papers.  I’ve seen a little of the tundra environment on Alaska’s North Slope.  But I was there to meet a research vessel.  The Polaris Project is different.  We’ll be immersed for a month in the environment.  I don’t know what to expect, but I’m probably not alone among the expectant participants to think of the coming field science in the language of adventure.  And we hope you’ll join us as a vicarious participant.  We’ll travel by boat to the complex delta at the mouth of the Kolyma, where last year a sudden slashing storm forced Polaris Project people to shelter overnight in a rickety fisherman’s cabin.  We’ll head upriver for Duvannyi Yar, where from the river-eroded cliffs mammoth bones protrude.  By the end of July, we’ll know a lot more about this remote segment of the Siberian giant, its hardships and beauty, its colors and moods, its ecological relationships and its importance to those of us living south of the Arctic Circle.  We’ll keep you posted every step of the way.

The article – which includes some of Max’s wonderful photos – can be viewed here.

Congratulations Max!

Max

We’re very proud of you Erin – and proud to be associated with you.  Congratulations!

Max

Congratulations to Heather!  This is truly a big honor – we look forward to interacting with her in Siberia in 2012 and 2013.

As an irrelevant aside, though I first met Heather last summer, it turns out that we are each graduates of the same high school in Clear Lake, Texas (clearly a launching pad for arctic researchers).  Go Falcons!

Max

Mantsa Andzhushey – Moscow State University

Dylan Broderick – Clark University

Ivan Dubinenkov – Moscow State University

Sam Dunn – St. Olaf College

Eirik Henriksen – Tromso University (Norway)

Sarah Ludwig – St. Olaf College

Laurel Lynch – St. Olaf College

Michael Melendez – University of Puerto Rico

Matt Moroney – Western Washington Univ.

Eli Rhodes – University of Oklahoma

Juan Carlos Ortega Sanchez – University of Puerto Rico

Allison Stringer – Oregon State University

Emily Sturdivant – Clark University

Becky Tachihara – Western Washington University

Congratulations to all the students!

They will be joined by Bill Sobczak (Associate Professor, Holy Cross College), John Schade (Associate Professor, St. Olaf College), Andy Bunn (Associate Professor, Western Washington University), Ekaterina Bulygina (Research Assistant and Laboratory Manager, Woods Hole Research Center), Jorien Vonk (Post-Doctoral Scientist, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology), Paul Mann (Post-Doctoral Scientist, Woods Hole Research Center), Dallas Murphy (writer, New York City), and Max Holmes (Senior Scientist, Woods Hole Research Center).

In addition, the staff of the Northeast Science Station are essential partners in the Polaris Project.  They include Sergey Zimov, Nikita Zimov, Galya Zimova, Sergey Davidov, and Anna Davidova.

The field course in summer 2011 is scheduled for approximately July 1 – August 1.

Application instructions and materials can be found under the Field Course tab.  We are only accepting applications from students who have not yet participated in the Polaris Project field course.

After pointless and senseless delay we have updated the photos page with a subset of the 2010 photos by Max and Chris.

“We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.”
- C.S. Lewis

A quay built by political prisoners.

A herd of reindeer near Ambarchik reminded us of the life that is worth fighting for.

We land in Yakutsk tonight and depart early the next day for Moscow – look for more travel updates in a few days!

There is a nice summary article in the New York Times today: In Weather Chaos, a case for Global Warming

Due to its severity, the Russian heat wave is give some extra attention:

“If you ask me as a person, do I think the Russian heat wave has to do with climate change, the answer is yes,” said Gavin Schmidt, a climate researcher with NASA in New York. “If you ask me as a scientist whether I have proved it, the answer is no — at least not yet.”

In Russia, that kind of scientific caution might once have been embraced. Russia has long played a reluctant, and sometimes obstructionist, role in global negotiations over limiting climate change, perhaps in part because it expected economic benefits from the warming of its vast Siberian hinterland.

But the extreme heat wave, and accompanying drought and wildfires, in normally cool central Russia seems to be prompting a shift in thinking.

“Everyone is talking about climate change now,” President Dmitri A. Medvedev told the Russian Security Council this month. “Unfortunately, what is happening now in our central regions is evidence of this global climate change, because we have never in our history faced such weather conditions in the past.”

Here are a few other articles on the same topic:

Climate Experts Agree: Global Warming Caused Russian Heat Wave

Analysis: Pakistan Floods, Russia Heat Fit Climate Trends

The main mission of Polaris Project is to advance arctic research and student skills, both of which I have hopefully accomplished this summer. Underpinning this mission is to build international relationships in order to understand unprecedented changes attributed to global warming. With fewer of us here we have been able to appreciate the Zimov’s contribution to our projects. Nikita has used his knowledge of the area to help find new locations for us to sample. He also engages in our thoughts and ideas, allowing for productive thought.

I believe to build a strong relationship it cannot be science 24/7. Therefore we have taken the liberty to find common passions and share a hint of culture. Valentina, our great cook, taught us how to make Palov (one of our favorite moose stew dishes). In return we taught Valentina how to make chocolate chip cookies. For Anya Zimov’s birthday we gave her the decorated chocolate chip cookie cake and sang happy birthday. Today Nikita, Travis and I went to the gym in Cherskiy to shoot some hoops. All three of us were in our glory, as we all share a common passion for basketball. We are trying to convince Nikita to build a hoop attached to Orbita (I will keep you posted).

Tomorrow I will be traveling to the Anui’s (large tributaries connected to the Kolyma) on what could be my last boat ride of the summer. I will be sure to soak it all up; the landscape, the breeze, the amazing sky, the wisdom, the knowledge, the people, the moments.

To address this question, I needed to measure the concentration of dissolved CO2 (partial pressure of CO2 or pCO2) in the stream sites I visited. If the concentrations of CO2 are high enough above atmospheric levels (~390 parts per million), then CO2 naturally evades from the stream to the atmosphere due to the concentration gradient. To take this one step further, I measured longitudinally along the stream to see if I could detect a loss of CO2 as I moved downstream. In other words, I wanted to directly measure the degassing of CO2 from the stream to atmosphere.

This figure encapsulates some of the trends I’ve been finding:

It shows three sites that shared a definitive waterfall feature where water flowing through the channel dropped abruptly ~.5-1 meters. The turbulence of such a feature allows CO2 to escape from the stream water to the atmosphere. Sure enough, after measuring the CO2 directly above and below the waterfalls, each stream showed a significant decline in dissolved CO2. I should note that most of the streams I have sampled have showed this loss of CO2 generally, measured over the course of the stream. They have also showed very high levels of CO2, some as high as 18,000 ppm (46 times atmospheric).

Aside from degassing, the only other mechanism for a loss in CO2 is through photosynthesis by aquatic algae. Blaize and I conducted a 24-hour pCO2 survey of a nearby stream and found no diurnal trends in CO2 (if there had been photosynthesis, we would have expected a drop in CO2 during the brightest part of the day, when algae are receiving proper sunlight). Furthermore, the CO2 loss displayed in the figure above could not have been due to photosynthesis given the short distance over which the loss was measured. This leaves degassing as the primary loss of CO2 and implicates these small arctic streams as key components to the carbon cycle during the summer months.

More to come.

-Travis

More to come! Stay tuned.

-Travis

PS- it snowed on Rodinkha (the nearest hill to the station).

Orbita is very quiet today; Joanne, Travis and Blaize are out on a sampling run with Nikita while I catch up on some lab work. We had the realization yesterday that we leave Cherskiy in a little over a week, and there is still so much to do! We have made good progress on our projects, and have another busy week planned but are starting to feel the time crunch. In addition to wrapping up our projects, it seems like we keep coming up with new things that we want to investigate. Yesterday Blaize and Travis sampled Y4 every 3 hours to get a sense of the whether or not pCO2 in the stream fluctuates diurnally, and Joanne and I are going to set up a series of nutrient spiked BOD incubations from a variety of streams to get a broad sense of nutrient limitation in streams across the landscape. We’re hoping to get up to the tundra/Arctic Ocean on Tuesday to sample sites again later in the summer, hopefully just for the day this time.

Living at the station without the clamor associated with Polaris has been totally different than the previous month, and really quite relaxing. I didn’t realize just how loud 25 people can be when all in a room together, and how much organized chaos and activity we generate. With just the four of us going about our business, it seems downright peaceful. We have all enjoyed spending more time with the Zimovs and Davydovs, who have welcomed us into their homes and daily routines. I finally succeeded in holding Dascha, the youngest Zimov, without making her cry – a big success! We’re also getting spoiled by Valentina, who has pulled out all the stops cooking for us. When not forced to feed 30 people at every meal, the food gets significantly more gourmet. Fish pizza, pelmeni (yummy ravioli dumplings), and blinis – yum.

The saddest event since the departure of the rest of the group came a few days ago – we had to say goodbye to the barge. A new group of scientists arrived to study permafrost in the tundra, so the barge took them up north and is their new home. It was so odd saying goodbye to something that has been our home base for 2 summers with the knowledge that this may be our last time here. We lingered on that last night, kept checking to see if we’d left anything, but really just taking it all in and memorizing those little details that we hold so dear – the tippy bench that will flip you off at a moment’s notice, the banya, the walls covered in maps and graphs of our findings this summer, the tables arrayed with 18 different kinds of hot sauce and Old Bay, the front porch strewn with XtraTufs and life jackets after a day in the field. The barge was the object around which we all seemed to orbit, would all come back to after a long day and share stories. Even after the group left, we still had the barge. Now as we walk to breakfast each morning at the guest house, we all look at the empty spot where our floating home should be and miss it and the community that it housed.

I must admit, we are starting to reminisce about all the things we’re excited for when we get home – clean clothes, fresh vegetables, showers with water pressure. We love our home here, but are starting to get excited to see friends and family. More updates will be coming – expect to hear from us after our last tundra trip!

Why do we do it? Because, rather quietly, more countries have set record high temperatures this year than any other single year in history. We have seen the hottest April, May, and June, hottest 12-month period, and hottest decade in the recorded history. Record flooding has destroyed millions of livelihoods in Pakistan, in the type of event that is predicted to become more and more common as temperatures rise. Russia and British Columbia are being devastated by forest fires sweeping through drought-strained forests. A new paper in Nature shows a 40% decline in phytoplankton in the oceans since 1950 because of warming seawater. The phytoplankton are a vital carbon sink, oxygen source, and the foundation of the entire marine food web.

But more on the fires – we flew over a dozen or more on the flights between Cherskiy and Moscow. The smoke was thick from the plane, but satellite views show that smoke is stretching across thousands of miles of Russia – equivalent to a haze from San Fransisco to Chicago. “practically everything is burning,” according to Russian president Medvedev. “…our country has not experienced such a heat wave in the last 50 or even 100 years… Overall, we need to learn our lessons from what has happened, and from the unprecedented heat wave that we have faced this summer. None of us can say what the next summer will be like. The forecasts vary greatly. Everyone is talking about climate change now. Unfortunately, what is happening now in our central regions is evidence of this global climate change, because we have never in our history faced such weather conditions in the past. This means that we need to change the way we work, change the methods that we used in the past.”

This is it folks. Climate change is not some vague threat of milder winters or melting ice. It is wildfires, floods, and hurricanes gaining power and frequency. It is crops, homes, and lives being lost. The time has come to get mad, and then to get busy.

As part of NASA’s ICESCAPE mission on the Healy, I and two of my Ph.D. students from Clark University (Christie Wood and Luke Trusel) were coring sea ice, collecting samples from the under-ice water column, and measuring light penetration at different wavelengths through the sea ice and through the ocean waters below. All of these parameters will give us insight into how expected future sea ice declines will impact the biology and biogeochemistry of one of the most productive marine ecosystems in the world. Conducting research onboard an icebreaker is a unique experience – for one, most of our group’s research was carried out by simply walking off the ship (in the middle of the ocean, mind you), straight onto the sea ice below.

June and July is an incredibly dynamic time of year in the Chukchi Sea, when sea ice begins to degrade, melt ponds form on sea ice surfaces, and hot algae blooms run rampant throughout the region. At our sampling stations, we were able to investigate both melt ponds (which function as “skylights”) and bare white ice surfaces (which shade light much more effectively), each impacting the biology and biogeochemistry of waters below to different extents.

The Chukchi Sea is also home to some of the most charismatic mammals on the planet (which are at the top of a food chain that the presence and seasonality of sea ice afford), to include polar bears (now deemed “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act) and walruses (which were just just petitioned under the Endangered Species Act in 2008). These “ice-obligate” species have been given particular attention owing to recently observed declines in Arctic sea ice. We were lucky enough to see a collection of these critters, to include a mother polar bear and her three cubs (likely two seasons’ worth).

So while I am missing my Polaris Project compatriots this summer, each of us was able to discover a small puzzle piece towards understanding an Arctic region so dramatically impacted by climate change. Here’s to furthering Arctic research – wherever you happen to be!

I’m glad to be home, I’ve missed my friends and family, but I honestly don’t know how to put into words how much the experience in Cherskiy has impacted me, how much it meant to me, and how much I’ll miss it.

Cherskiy itself is absolutely beautiful, undeniably the most beautiful place I’ve ever been, but it’s the people I’ve shared this experience with and the science and research we conducted together that will keep that place so close to my heart. When John said in his last blog that this could be a fundamentally changing experience for some of the students, I count myself in that group. I think we all will.

The science was amazing. It was easier then I thought to talk about the work that I’ve been doing Siberia. I had imagined that talking about seasonal bacterial community variation and spring flush versus summer base flow conditions effecting DOC decomposition would be hard to explain to people without science backgrounds, but it was easy enough with the multiple people I’ve already shared my experience with. Whether in a mix of broken Russian and English, or at the back of the plane while stretching our legs, sharing my experience and data, the Polaris Project, and of course stories of Sergei Zimov and the work he does, has completely dominated every conversation. And that was just conversations in passing. I can’t wait to really sit down with people and explain all that I’ve been doing and all that Polaris and the Zimov’s have done.

Now the people of Polaris; the teachers, post docs, fellow students, and of course the Zimov’s and all the others of the North East Science Station, that is one aspect of the trip that would take quite a while to do any justice to. Lets just say that I love them all, have made a group of friends as close as family, and get a little teary eyed thinking about all the different good byes as our group slowly diminished. From the station where we had to say good bye to the returning students, to the airport in Cherskiy saying good bye to Nikita, to Yakutsk, to Moskow, and finally Washington where the last of the new students and all the PIs had to go off to our separate gates, each good bye was painful but full of hopes that we’ll see each other again.

So thank you Polaris, I can say with complete truth that this has been the best, most life changing experience of my life. It’s concreted the direction of my career and fueled the flame of my determination for field research. It’s given me a group of friends I’ll never forget and a set of memories that will never fade. The field aspect of Polaris might be done (for now) but the work is really just beginning. Now it’s time to process data and samples and, most importantly, share what we’ve done.

So, a few random thoughts about Polaris III, summer 2010.

This was our best summer yet scientifically. The scope and number of projects was quite impressive given our short time (~3 weeks) to complete them. We have improved our understanding of the role of light and nutrients in the processing of dissolved organic matter, applied a new method to the study of nutrient cycling in streams which has produced interesting, if somewhat confusing, results and expanded our knowledge of aquatic ecosystems in the Kolyma basin to include nutrient concentrations, pCO2 and particulate organic carbon.

The level of collaboration between the US and Russian members of our team has grown stronger with Valentin Spektor, Nikita Zimov, Sergei Zimov, Sergei Davidov and Anya Davidova making strong contributions by sharing ideas and information and mentoring student projects. I think it is obvious that stronger partnerships within our group have greatly improved the quality of the work we are doing.

We have had our first experience with integrating postdocs into our group, and Paul Mann and Jorien Vonk were fantastic additions to our group, both personally and professionally. I hope to see them both back next summer.

Beyond our scientific success, we have also forged some strong personal connections that will last a lifetime. For me, every summer, my family grows bigger and our connections grow stronger. Our students become like my children (well, maybe younger siblings) and my colleagues my brothers and sisters. Each summer is different, but every year, by the end of the trip we linger in each airport saying good-bye to some members of the team, and one hug is never enough. In Cherskiy, it’s the Zimovs and Davidovs. In Yakutsk, it’s Valentin. In Moscow this year, it was Ivan and Jorien. And in Washington, everyone else. It is a bittersweet moment. We all have family, friends and a life to return to that we love (not to mention good restaurants, i.e. Cecil’s in St. Paul), but we have also shared what sometimes seems like a moment in time, an experience that changes all of us, sometimes in fundamental ways. For us older folks, these changes can be pretty subtle, a shift towards a new research direction, a propensity to sing Russian folk songs. For the younger folks, these changes can be quite fundamental and important, maybe even a new life path if they stay true to their final reflections.

What I think is really amazing about all three years of the Polaris Project is the consistently powerful impact it has had on the students and even some of the PI’s (I refer to myself). We are changing lives and setting ourselves on a path that I believe is leading to a significant impact on Arctic ecology and public perceptions of climate change and the role of science. To our students, I say it is up to you to realize the vision and continue to build on what we have started. To all of my colleagues, I say thank you for what has been the best professional experience of my life.

I am sincerely and profoundly grateful to all of you.

We are in the Moscow airport now and about to head home. To all the parents and friends of the students out there, your loved ones will be home soon to share their experiences with you. Hope you are well and signing off from Russia.

Sudeep
Assistant Prof of Limnology and Conservation Ecology
University of Nevada- Reno
Polaris Project Co Investigator

During my remaining time here, I’m continuing my soil BOD experiments and conducting nutrient limitation experiments. In lakes, rivers and streams, rates of carbon processing are limited by nutrients in the relative minimum. In more relatable terms, it’s possible to think of the nutrients as milk and cookies. As a human, we can only eat so many cookies before we need a glass of milk to wash it down. When you run out of milk, you need to stop eating cookies. Microorganisms operate on a similar principle. As an Arctic microorganism, you can only process so much carbon before you need some nitrogen or phosphorous. When you run out of one of them, you stop processing carbon.

You can conduct experiments to test what macronutrient is in the relative minimum by collecting water in containers and adding some nutrients. Different buckets get different nutrient treatments (only phosphorous, only nitrogen, and both nitrogen and phosphorous), and some buckets get no treatment. Then, you measure aerobic activity to see which buckets process more or less carbon. If more carbon is processed, then the nutrient that was added to the bucket is limiting.

Here in Cherskiy I’m on round three of these experiments. To add an element of excitement, the containers I’m using are 75 L trash cans from town, and there’s incubating on the roof of the lab so they’re exposed to natural weather conditions. We’ll keep you posted on how this and our other experiments go!

The vivacious vestige of the Polaris Project (Blaize, Erin, JoAnn, and Travis), through which the remainder of the group must live vicariously, woke up to a vicious odor of smoke and an eerie unplaceable source of sickly yellow light yesterday morning.

This summer in Cherskii, as the returning students and PIs can attest, has been anomalously hot. The high temperatures here have had a drastic affect–extremely low precipitation and frequent fires. As the temperature increases, peat bogs dry out or desiccate, setting the stage for rampant fires.

In addition to fires, the heat has had cascading affects on the region. Some of these affects are readily apparent. This year, the Polaris Project witnessed significantly more wildlife than the past two years, most likely because animals are forced to congregate near larger bodies of water as their upland sources dried up. We have seen caribou, moose, bears, countless birds, and owls, often drinking at the banks of the larger rivers. The dryness has also meant almost no mosquitos. With fewer wet areas, mosquitos have nowhere to lay their eggs, and their populations tank. Furthermore, much to the stream team’s dismay, many of the small streams that ran throughout July in 2009 are completely dry this year.

These trends are alarming in and of themselves, but they also foreshadow things to come. As a result of global warming, arctic temperatures continue to rise faster than anywhere on the globe. These unprecedented temperatures are likely to bring about more heat waves, more fires, more animal migrations, and generally dryer watersheds. With the red sun bearing down overhead, and the stuffy thick smoke-laden air, Cherskii looks and feels like something out of a post-apocalyptic movie. We returning students are looking forward to some wind to blow away this ominous smog.

To the tune of Proud Mary by Creedance Clearwater Revival.

We left our homes for the summer
Heading to the land of no night just day
Loading up on bug shirts, boots and peanut butter
Heading to the north for a month long stay

Mahalia keep on crooning
Oh that jelly keep on spooning
And we’re rolling, rolling, rolling on a river

We settled into life in Cherskiy
Playing Settlers by night, doing research all day
And we never got one minute of sleeping
Cause John’s damn snoring kept ups up all night

Drinking Zatecky Gus
Eating biscuits, canned cow and moose
And we’re rolling, rolling, rolling on a river

Heading north to the tundra
Expecting just to stay for one long day
Stranded in the fish shack
Crowded, sweaty, smelly
Congealed into our speggy-wedge that fateful ay

“And What” said dearest Vanya
Drinking beer sitting in the banya
And we’re rolling, rolling, rolling on a river

Heading back to the US
We never imagined we’d reach this day
Ready to eat veggies
And wear some clean clothes
But memories of this month with never fade

Big thanks to the station and PIs
For a month that surely opened our eyes
And we’re rolling, rolling, rolling on a river

As I am writing this, it is dark outside. For the first time in a month it is actually night time. We have completed one flight, just three more flights and 16 more time zones to go through. Although it was a sad day, travel went smoothly. We arrived safely tonight in Yakutsk (it is a lot easier with ten fewer people and bags). We hope that the rest of our trip; to Moscow tomorrow and the US on Monday go as smoothly.

The one upshot of having many long flights is that it gives us students the opportunity to work on our presentations. On Sunday, we will each present the preliminary findings from our research projects this summer. Although we all had a general understanding of what each other was studying, I am excited to hear in depth about all the work that was accomplished this month.

Soil contains lots of “stuff”- plant material, leaf litter, roots, minerals, and organisms among other things –that can contribute nutrients to the environment. In particular, I’m looking at the nutrients soil can contribute to water. In order to take the nutrients out of the soil and into water to measure them, we need to create soil extracts.

The process is, in a phrase, time consuming. First, we clean one and a half liter bottles (in my case, $80 worth of water bottles) with a weak HCl solution to get rid of anything which can contaminate our samples. Then, we add a mixture of 10 mL water to 1 g soil to our bottles and give them a good, half hour long shake to “free up” and release the nutrients. After letting them settle overnight, we undertake the surprisingly long (up to 5 hours a sample) process of filtering out the soil particles, leaving us with nutrient-enriched water we can test and use for
experiments.

I’m testing my soil extracts for their biological “reactivity” in local aquatic ecosystems. The method I’m using for this is a BOD, or biological dissolved oxygen, test. In a BOD test, I mix my soil extract with water from the Kolyma River and place it in a tightly sealed bottle. The amount of dissolved oxygen is measured at different time intervals. From the changes in dissolved oxygen concentration, it’s possible to calculate how much carbon the microorganisms are “eating” and the levels of bioavailable nutrients in the soil extracts. This morning I prepped 98 of these bottles, and they’re currently incubating while I await results.

In addition to the BODs, I’m getting levels of nutrients measured using through water quality tests. Our PIs John and Kate do a fantastic job of keeping up with the influx of soil extract samples they’ve been receiving from us today, and it’s been great to have almost real-time nutrient data.

It’s been a busy last few days here at the station. We’ll keep you posted!

PS- To my friends and family, sometimes the internet here doesn’t send e-mails. But I’m alive and well and enjoying my time here.

For most of the year this part of the ocean is covered in sea ice. The image below, courtesy of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, shows the Arctic Ocean’s sea ice extent as of July 15, 2010.  Note the small region of open water near the mouth of the Kolyma River – that is where the Polaris students were swimming.

But as has been happening Arctic-wide for the past few decades, sea ice has been retreating from this part of the Siberian coast.  The figure below shows the minimum annual sea ice extent each year since 1979 (determined using satellite imagery), which typically occurs in the middle of September.

2010 is on track to be another year with anomalously low sea ice extent, with the current sea ice extent almost as low as it was on this date during the record breaking 2007 season.  Will 2010 set a new record?

What does this all mean?  In addition to the impacts of sea ice loss for arctic organisms (including humans), how might sea ice loss impact people living outside of the Arctic?

You may ask: why would anyone pull an all-nighter filtering?  Well, due to the slight detour on our return trip from the tundra, we lost a day of lab time.  It has recently hit home with everyone that we will be leaving very soon, and an urgency regarding lab analyses has placed us all firmly in what can be called “hyper mode”.  I expect to finish all my soil extracts tonight, sleep for a few hours, eat breakfast, sleep until lunch, and go sampling again.  The lake team has a similar plan, but rather than field work they will be on the scopes examining their catch.

1. Keep your eyes peeled

We took off towards the north in three boats.  Traveling down the Kolyma, we saw beautiful mountains, boreal forests, small towns and refineries. The strangest thing we came across was a car floating down the river. It was suspended between two large yellow inflatable tubes. Two men were riding on the car-pontoon-boat; one laying on the roof and the other steering with a 30 horsepower outboard motor.  We laughed at the absurdity of the sight, but as we continued north we passed another car and a van floating in a similar manner. When we attached to Zimov’s large grey boat to refuel, there were passengers who were filming the progress of the trip. Apparently these three vehicles started in Yakutsk on June 1st, drove to the head waters of the Kolyma and are making their way to the Arctic Ocean. After the weather we experienced, we hope that they are safe and still floating.

As we approached the mouth of the Kolyma, the horizon was dotted with white chunks. Since we were entering the Arctic Ocean, we immediately assumed it was sea ice. Jorien, our seasoned ocean explorer, explained that what we imagined as sea ice was actually a fata morgana, a mirage on the horizon. We quickly learned that we couldn’t trust  that the islands we were seeing  were really there; at this point we were in the Arctic Ocean,  north of us was the north pole and Canada beyond.   The ocean was reflecting the sky, creating phantom islands that were always out of our reach.

Because of our skepticism we almost missed the herd of reindeer running along the coast.  Using binoculars and camera lenses, we strained to decipher what made up the moving brown blob. Once it was a confirmed reindeer sighting, Nikita raced the boat at maximum speed to the herd.   We jumped out as fast as we could, most of us neglecting our shoes, and raced up the drift wood and mounds of eroding dirt to reach the tundra plateau. The sight was breathtaking; at least two thousand reindeer grazing, and moving along under the watchful eyes of indigenous herders.

Blinded by our joy at seeing such a large herd, we failed to see the shallow water at the mouth of the Kolyma. First Speedy, the large white boat, was beached on a sandbar. The boat with the forty horse power engine got stuck trying to save Speedy. And the smallest boat tried to stay away but was pushed onto a separate sandbar. In order to get out, Nikita and Max Holmes braved the cold water and pulled the boats across the mud back into deeper water. We cautiously drove away, keeping our eyes peeled for shallow water and logs floating down the river.

2. Watch where you step

Our first stop on our trip north was Ambarchik, a weather station inhabited by one family with ten children. The views of the ocean and tundra were beautiful, but everyone was focused on their feet. Broken glass, barrels, rusty nails and the occasional carcass littered the ground. All of this debris is leftover from Ambarchik’s previous life as a Stalinist prison camp – a gulag.  Among the rusty barrels was a cross commemorating the victims of political oppression.

There were also natural hazards. We had to be careful not to slip on the ice on the edge of the snow patch. There we were, at sea level, on July 24^th, having a snowball fight with the last remnants of winter snow. The director of the weather station told us that the sea ice receded only a month before. It is hard to imagine how long their winter must be at the edge of the world. We took advantage of being there during their brief summer to swim in the Arctic Ocean. Remarkably it was warm enough to swim around in the ocean and stand in our bathing suits while we dried off.

Our second stop was at the mouth of the Sukharnaya River. Looking out across the tundra, it appeared perfectly flat for miles; we had passed the tree line 50 kilometers to the south. However, the tundra is treacherous for ankles. With each step, the hummocks tip twisting your ankle in every direction.  We had to tread carefully to avoid hurting ourselves.

3. Keep your feet dry

Wet feet= squishy socks, in squishy boots, on top of squishy moss; not a pleasant experience (especially if you have cotton socks and are losing all your body heat).  Despite our group’s massive investment in rubberized footwear, a miss-step while walking through the tundra can result quickly in an over-topped boot or a quick dive into a stealthy fen (wet grassland hole).   Difficult walking through the tundra- but your feet might never be dry again.

4. Bring a fishing rod

At the Sukharnaya we hiked to Zimov’s secret fishing spot.  The water was remarkably clear and pure – delicious to drink. Immediately people jumped in to swim, collect water samples and pick bugs. Bill discovered that the caddisflies that covered every rock the past two years were nowhere to be found; a result of the unusually warm summer.  Fishing rods provided entertainment; many people tried casting, some more successfully than others, while others gracefully fly fished. We caught ten Arctic Grayling. Melissa cut out chunks of their muscles so she can run isotope analysis on the fish to see what they are eating. We thought that the grayling would be a nice addition to whatever warm meal Valentina, our cook, had waiting for us at the barge. Little did we know we would not be making it home that night.

5. Wear layers

At the mouth of the river, the weather can change very quickly. Hiking back from the Sukharnaya, we were sweating across the tundra, but in a matter of seconds the wind picked up and the temperature dropped 30 degrees. The gorgeous sunset on flat water turned into a gray sky above white caps. We gathered on the beach and dug through our back packs to find our jackets that a half hour before we laughed at ourselves for bothering to carry.

Bundled in every layer we owned, we waited on the beach while Nikita and Sergei assessed the weather situation. Next thing we know, they race off in the boats, leaving us wondering when the would return. But being the proactive people we are, the group did not sit idly. Instead we built Polaris Town; a marvelous shelter of driftwood and a fire to dry our socks and smoke one of the grayling.

The weather had worsened, and it was clear we were not going to make it back to Cherskiy. Nikita returned and instructed us to walk the two kilometers down the beach to a nearby “settlement”.

Our shelter for the night was a winter fishing lodge, a well insulated building with five beds around a wood stove and small kitchen/ dining room with a propane stove.  With twenty two people crammed inside, the layers came in handy as pillows and blankets as people covered every surface to sleep.  Sleep might not accurately describe the experience for everyone; some people snored loudly while others closed their eyes and struggled to stay warm.

6. Eat whatever is available

During the day we were amazed at the amount of food we had brought along; boxes of chocolate bars, a whole block of cheese and bags of salami. However, when the weather turned and it was not clear when we would be able to leave, food anxiety started to climb.   The cookies we took for granted the day before were now the staple of our diet. Zimov dug into the emergency food supply at the fishing lodge and prepared a spaghetti dinner; pasta boiled with five cans of cow meat. Some students remarked at how buttery the pasta was, but there was no butter… just lard. Usually we would be disgusted by this level of grease, but we were now in survival mode, and any calories were fuel.

The next day we napped, sat around a fire on the beach and explored an ice wedge while waiting for an estimated time of departure. We all feared that the only food would be a repeat of the previous night’s dinner. Instead, Kate whipped up a delicious feast of rice with arctic grayling, which we supplemented with more cookies and chocolate.

The best treat that we had was speggy-wedge, a breakfast reincarnation of the spaghetti dinner Valentina prepared before we left. Speggy-wedge is noodles mixed with egg, milk and butter, baked into pie form and cut into wedges.  Many people eschewed the clammy, congealed mass but others saw its beauty. The group was in separate strands, but mixed with the egg of our adventures, the fat of our food and baked in that small shack, we have congealed into a cohesive wedge.

7. Always trust Sergei and Nikita Zimov

We owe our safe trip to Sergei and Nikita who carried twenty pieces of luggage (Zimov’s description of us passengers) to the Arctic and back, giving us the adventure of a lifetime and bringing us home again, safe and sound.

- The Polaris Team

Max

However, after several more trips to check our trap we concluded that what we were doing was not sufficient to provide the number of amphipods we needed. So, we called in the professional amphipod catcher, Nikita Zimov to show us how to do it. We left with two much larger and sturdier traps that were much easier to stick in the lake and the next day yielded over 50 amphipods. We finally got our experiment up and running yesterday and are now hoping that the amphipods are chomping away 24/7 at little bits of sediment so we can take them out and measure in two days. In the meantime we have been sampling lakes from a raft in an effort to catalog the diversity of invertebrates and how floodplain and non-floodplain lakes differ. It involves a lot of staring into Frisbees sorting through debris looking for fairly miniscule worms and a handful of larger leeches and nymphs.

On a personal note, I saw one of the most beautiful sunsets of my life last night (actually it was early this morning and it wasn’t a true sunset), complete with a reddish rainbow that was more like a beam shooting into the sky. Another highlight was watching Sergey Zimov fly fish off the barge two nights ago and clear the entire deck in a matter of 30 seconds as people fled for their eyes and ears from the lassos that whistled just past our heads. As he said with a slight hint of amusement, he is used to fishing alone. Tomorrow we head north to the tundra and hopefully the Arctic Ocean. I look forward to the new scenery and any new bugs it may bring…

Elliot

The landscape is surreal, with mounds of soil and ice up to 40 feet tall, rivers of mud flowing on all sides, and 10,000-year-old bones emerging from the ground. The whole landscape is sliding into the river.

Patches of “quickmud” threaten to steal your boots, or worse. The science is not in, but it seems that global warming is melting this landscape before our eyes. It is striking that the burning of fossil fuels all over the world is causing this change here – and igniting positive feedbacks that threaten the world as we know it.

Master data sheet_2010

We’re generally too dirty to venture into any of the other labs, but I have it on good information that the soils lab is the place to be, hands down. I’m not trying say anything, you know, about anybody else, I’m just sayin’. Anyway, I like it in here. Short field campaigns like this are always intense and after a week or two everyone is insurmountably fatigued, almost to the point of delirium. If you take about four or five people in this state and put them in a room to process soils for six hours or so the ensuing conversations can be pretty entertaining. You can learn how the clothes you wear make others feel. There is also opportunity for extreme cultural exchange; it turns out that some people have the stereotype that Americans use sandwich-making as a stress release mechanism.

At this point I’m wondering whether I should put my grilled cheese sandwich in the 60 degree or 105 degree drying oven.

That’s what my week has been like. This whole trip has been a fever pitch of new ideas then scratched ideas, only to be then resurrected and manipulated into something even more exciting. I came to the barge with an idea of studying upper trophic levels (fish in particular) and nutrient flow and food webs, only to have my interest peaked by Bill Sobsczak and the work he would be doing with bacterial respiration and biological oxygen demand of bacteria. Since that night I have proudly been a part of the BARGE (bacterial analysis research group extraordinaire) team.

My initial over arching question, what I had wanted the theme of my research here to revolve around, was ‘Why is the spring flush such a reactive period for bacteria when it’s so dang cold (1 – 4*C)?’ Normally bacteria, as most creatures, are restricted in metabolic rates by low temperatures. There could be a number of answers to that question however, and the work I wanted to do was mainly in answering which of those options was the most significant a factor.

Working around so many amazing people and interesting scientific projects has its downfalls though. I let myself be distracted by different ideas and possibilities and angles, as well as different (and rather intriguing) research projects altogether, that I lost sight of that original question.  Today, that something beautiful happened. While on a walk with my project mentor (Bill) I was reminded to have confidence in my original project, and focus on my “shoebox” the one thing that was my work, that I could write about and present with confidence at the end of this trip, my contribution to Polaris 2010.

So far I have two experiments, done separately, seeking different angles of what might be effecting this high bioavailability (approximately 20% throughout the flush compared to an average of 5% through summer base flow months), including temperature and bacterial community differences. The something beautiful was the plan of a project bringing everything together. It goes back to my original question while still incorporating the work I’ve already done. This project will be a manipulation of filtered Kolyma water, looking at Spring bacteria vs. Summer bacteria vs. temperature vs. a new addition of manipulations; summer Kolyma water vs. Kolyma water with a detritus leachate added to replicate spring flush water.  This project will bring everything together beautifully, coming full circle in my research and hopefully bringing enlightenment on what aspect is making the spring flush such an amazingly reactive period.

a) this part of the world has a lot of frozen carbon from the Pleistocene era stored underground called Yedoma that has the potential to thaw as the earth warms,

b) the thawing of this carbon and transformation of this carbon into gases (e.g. carbon dioxide, methane, etc.) could have implications for climate change, however

c) measurements of how this carbon is transformed in the streams, lakes, rivers, and the ocean is not well understood since processing of carbon can dependent on a variety of factors (e.g. light, nutrients) that change in the landscape.

After 3 years of working on this project, I am extremely grateful to have instrumentation that allows us to track our projects in near real time. It is a real benefit for both students and professors since almost daily we are able to design and modify projects to understand part of the carbon transformation processes.
Yesterday for example, Lydia, one of the students from Carlton College, and I were talking about part of her study that determines how light might alter the carbon coming out of Yedoma. The experiment is rather simple where we wanted to add water extracted from Yedoma we call “Yedoma juice” to lake water and see how quickly the carbon was transformed and degraded with light. As you can imagine, light is freely available near Santa’s home in the summer time. We assumed the Yedoma juice had large carbon concentrations compared to the lake water. This assumption would allow us to detect the impact of light on the carbon atoms. Now that we have specialized equipment here at the station to analyze for the dissolved form of carbon, we found the lake water contained greater concentrations of dissolved carbon than the Yedoma juices we were going to add.

This poses a large problem for the experiment since the lake water would overwhelm the signal from the Yedoma juice and likely not allow us to detect any changes. Traditionally, we would have only known about this issue once we came back to our laboratory in the US where the machines to make these measurements are located. Both Lydia and I were pretty happy to have the new instruments here at the Northeast science station to help guide our experiments. Now we can redesign our work and continue to understand the carbon cycle here.
It is great to be part of a team that has access to unique equipment in a remote location of the world. Learning about this place and its contribution to climate change would take a long time if you had to go back and forth between the US and Russia to conduct our measurements. It is nice to think quickly on our feet and modify our questions almost immediately so we can maximize the energy and investment it took to get here in the first place!

That is all the news from the field,

Sudeep

Thanks to our enduring host Nikita we were able to make a back to back trip to the North and then to the South. I was one of the fortunate students who got to go on the 15 hour trip. The trip was full of adventure as we stopped at a remote fisherman hut, we ate lunch on a small island over looking Duvannyi Yar and we got to sample at some amazing locations. The Omalon water is a beautiful distinctive green color, visual evidence that something is causing a difference in the composition of the water. Next we ventured on to the slopes of Duvannyi Yar, where the river bank is eroding yedoma soils and melting ice wedges causing chocolate streams to trickle down into the river. It truly is an amazing place.

Since being back from the trip I have been busy filtering the sampled water so that it can be analyzed for different measurements. Thanks to the help of many Polaris project members we already have nutrient, DOC (dissolved organic Carbon) and absorbance results for many of the sites. I also have been analyzing the water for alkalinity. Understanding the alkalinity will help get at the amount of CO2 outgassing from the water. Travis from the stream team will also be looking at CO2 at different locations along a stream. I am looking forward to merging our data. Until next adventure…

All in all it was amazing to leave our bubble and truly see life in Cherskiy. The town and the culture of the people are surprisingly different form ourselves. While in the stores we were obviously noticed not only for our overwhelming American-ness, but for our sloppy field dress. As part of the culture it seems that all Russian people make that special effort to dress up and look nice every day, everything from designer jeans to dresses and heels to suits. We were honored to get the opportunity to travel into Cherskiy and experience life there. It’s a memory all of us will treasure and we can’t wait to get back and hit the town for another exciting night in Cherskiy!

Yesterday, Nikita, Blaize and I journeyed to the Omalon in support of two projects here in Siberia (See Max’s blog below).  The river survey group have already introduced themselves, but Nikita and my project is a more recent development and has not yet been described here.

I am still working on terrestrial systems as was mentioned earlier in the blog, but my focus has shifted somewhat to the emission of nitrous oxide (N2O) and CO2 from the soils themselves.  To those of you who are saying to yourselves: “Nitrous oxide, why does that sound familiar?” , I give ten points.  Nitrous oxide is better known as laughing gas, and most of you have had experience with it at the dentist.  What you may not know, however, is that nitrous oxide (from now on N2O) is a greenhouse gas that has been more or less overlooked in arctic systems to date.

N2O is produced in two different ways in an ecosystem: during denitrification (pronounced dee-night-riff-ih-kay-shun) the conversion of nitrate (NO3) to nitrogen gas (N2), and during nitrification, the conversion of ammonium (NH4) to nitrate (NO3).  Most of the Nitrous N2O produced is through the denitrification pathway, which only occurs when there is available nitrate, organic carbon, and low oxygen levels.  However, a small amount of N2O is also created during nitrification as a byproduct.  Additionally, it is somewhat common for there to be small pockets of low oxygen in the soil, in which denitrification can take place in as well.  If you combine the N2O produced during nitrification, and that made during denitirification, you may have a sizable amount of this greenhouse gas in places you wouldn’t normally expect it.

That’s what we are trying to figure out; how much N2O is being given off by different types of soils in the Russian arctic?

Everyone has days where one amazing thing after another occurs. But when you’re conducting research in the Siberian Arctic, amazing events take on a whole new meaning. Take, for example, my past 24 hours.

It began after last night’s dinner, when Sergi Zimov hauled a giant mammoth tusk into the barge, let it crash onto the floor, and encouraged us to examine it. It weighed a ton, and was far heavier than any of us could have imagined. He then informed us that it was only half a tusk of a young mammoth, and proceeded to give an impromptu talk on his brainchild, Pleistocene Park. Following the lecture, we heard excited cries from outside that an owl had landed on the walkway to the barge. We all ran out just in time so see a beautiful, giant owl flying away holding its prey.

Today, Valentin, Chris Linder, two researchers from Alaska and I went with Sergi Davidov on what may be the best sampling excursion I have ever experienced. We went to Rodinka, one of the largest mountains in the vicinity, to take soil samples down the slope. As we hiked to our first sampling site, vast amount of wild blueberries were under our feet waiting for us to bend down and pick them for a quick mid-walk snack. Then, once we got to our first site, we saw a large bear frocking about and eating berries!

This should have been the highlight of our sampling trip, but surprisingly it got better. As we proceeded downslope, we ran across an abandoned gold mine which cut into the ridge and provided an amazing view of the soil’s geologic layers. Along the way, Davidov gave us a personalized ecology talk. We then entered a dry creek bed which had weathered away the ground down to Pleistocene soils and exposed old bones. During our walk, we saw a 10,000 year old bison shoulder bone, a horn, and part of a bison skull.

Further on, we saw some enormous wolf tracks. But, surprisingly, the highlight was still to come. Our final sampling site was situated in the middle of a hilly field of wildflowers. We ended up working amongst a sweetly scented blanket of yellow, purple, and white in what Chris Linder called our “Sound of Music” sampling site.

All and all, an amazing day. Until later!

Though we often refer to this Siberian adventure as a field course, it really is more of a hands-on research experience.  Nevertheless, we have taken advantage of brief breaks in the action to present a series of research seminars and discussions.  The list below shows the seminars that have been given during our first week in Cherskiy.  The frequency of presentations will slow as students increasingly become consumed with their research projects, but already we have squeezed what might typically be an entire semester’s worth of weekly seminars into a single week.  Things happen fast in the land of 24 hour sunlight!

1.  July 7.  Max Holmes, Woods Hole Research Center.  “Going with the Flow – Rivers as Integrators of Watershed Processes”

2.  July 7.  Paul Mann, Woods Hole Research Center.  “Biogeochemistry of the Kolyma River Watershed – April through June, 2010”

3.  July 8.  Bill Sobsczak, Holy Cross College.  “Carbon Cycle Tutorial”

4.  July 8.  John Schade, St. Olaf College.  “Understanding Stream Biogeochemistry through Short-Term Solute Additions”

5.  July 9.  Valentin Spektor, Melnikov Permafrost Institute.  “Introduction to Permafrost Science”

6.  July 9.  Sudeep Chandra, University of Nevada Reno.  “Coupled Lake-Stream Ecosystems”

7.  July 9. Yorien Vonk, Stockholm University.  “Terrestrial Organic Matter in the Coastal Zone of Siberia”

8.  July 10.  Scott Goetz, Woods Hole Research Center.  “Understanding Arctic System Change – Satellite Remote Sensing Approaches”

9.  July 10.  Michelle Mack, University of Florida.  “Fire in the Arctic”

10.  July 10.  Heather Alexander, University of Florida.  “Plant Adaptations to Arctic Fire”

11.  July 11.  Graduate School Considerations – Panel Discussion led by Postdocs (Paul Mann, Jorien Vonk, Heather Alexander, and Mike Loranty).

12. July 12.  Paul Mann, Woods Hole Research Center.  “Fluorometric Approaches for Understanding the Origin, Composition, and Processing of Dissolved Organic Matter”

The Polaris Project is interested in the transport and transformation of carbon and nutrients as they flow with water from uplands to the Arctic Ocean.  As the satellite image below shows, there are a remarkable diversity of ecosystems and landscapes in the vicinity of the Northeast Science Station, including boreal forest, tundra, and a great diversity of lakes, streams, and rivers (including the Kolyma River – one of the largest in the Arctic).

Yesterday Nikita Zimov and I made the farthest-north foray yet in the 3 years of the Polaris Project, eventually reaching the Arctic Ocean proper before sampling a small tundra stream flowing directly into the Arctic Ocean.  We also sampled several other sites along the way.

Today Nikita and two students (Blaize Denfeld and Sam Dunn) are heading south along the Kolyma River to sample several tributaries as well as to collect samples of Yedoma soils from Divannyi Yar for various experiments.  Remarkably, over a two day period we will have sampled at all of the locations identified in the figure below, plus some.  The logistical capabilities of the Station are stunning, as are the environments that we are able to sample.

For months we have been looking at maps and satellite images of the Kolyma, and from the top of Rodinka we could see for miles over the endless of lakes, winding Kolyma and down on our barge home. It was breathtaking.

Sergei Zimov took us on a tour of the Bulldozer site, where he plows down boreal forest, including the active soil layer, to restore the productive grasslands that existed in the Pleistocene era. Because of a bum ankle, I could not hike the three kilometers to the site with the group. Instead I got the chance to pick the brain of the mastermind behind the Northeast Science Station, Sergei Zimov. Zimov drove me in the argo, an eight wheeled all terrain vehicle (really, it is even a boat). We crashed through the forest, taking down seven-foot trees, climbing dirt mounds and turning on a dime. Because we were speeding along faster than the walkers (at times 20km/hr), we would stop periodically and sit.

Me and Zimov on the Argo

At some of the stops Zimov would tell me about his reasoning for the bulldozer experiment or his plan for Pleistocene Park, other times we would sit in silence while he smoked. During our two-hour excursion he must have smoked a pack of cigarettes. He calmly smoked, while I frantically swatted the mosquitoes swarming around us. I tried to be strong, but I finally caved and zipped up my bug shirt. Zimov told me that this was not a lot of mosquitoes. A lot of mosquitoes is when you spit on your hand, smack your shoulder and catch over a hundred; a huge amount of mosquitoes is over three hundred. I can’t imagine.

On the way back home, we ran over a downed tree that got stuck in the argo. When he returned from removing it, he handed me a twig and said, “Eat this.” To my surprise it was covered in blueberries. My ankle injury has hindered me quite a bit this summer, but in this case it gave me the unique opportunity to interact with Zimov. During the ride I got to eat delicious berries, destroy fifty trees, and soak up the wisdom of a seasoned ecologist.

A few nights ago, the topic of our post-dinner discussion was graduate school. It was interesting to hear from people that went straight from undergrad into Ph.D. programs, and those who took time off and explored different fields in master’s and Ph.D. programs. Each shared their story and how they made various decisions along the way, and what the pros and cons of their experiences were. It was reassuring to hear from so many scientists in diverse fields of study that there is more than one way to arrive at a successful career.

Several of the PIs who take graduates students also provided insight on the application process – what they look for in students, how to successfully contact advisers, and some tips for putting together a strong application.

All the undergrads left the evening feeling a little stressed out, but with a lot more insight as to how to successfully apply to graduate school. Watch out academia – here we come.

The landscape here  is changing – as permafrost melts, vast regions are subsiding and shifting. In some places, the earth piles itself up like 3-meter smallpox bumps. The time is short. The research being conducted here is critical to understanding the changes in the future and those that are already occurring – but it is not stopping the flow of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. The current is as fast as ever on those rivers of oil called highways. Factories are churning out gigatons of consumer goods (consumer bads?) and gigatons of carbon dioxide. Forests are being clearcut from Washington to Madagascar, from Indonesia to Alberta.

This is what I fight for:

Shuchi Lake, site of much Polaris research

Yesterday was our first day in the field after a couple days of preparation. Our two goals were to collect the permafrost for our carbon processing experiment and to set up a system to catch bugs to put in the bottles. In order to capture the bugs we built a high-tech collecting device. It actually is a broom made from  plant branches stuck into the mud in Shuci Lake, which will hopefully act as a home for the invertebrates. Once the bugs start to attach to this structure we will be able to pull it out of the water and collect them. However, putting our gadget in place didn’t go exactly as planned. Plan D involved us taking a large dead tree and trying to jam it into the mud to get it to stay in place on the bottom of the lake. Finally plan E or F ended up being successful and hopefully our brilliant improvisation and labor will pay off. We will find out today or tomorrow when we go back to collect it.

In Siberia, you work with what you got.

One of the challenges for foreign researchers working in Russia is that sample export is very difficult and expensive.  At the same time, analytical facilities at remote field sites are typically rudimentary at best.  The Polaris Project has sought to improve the analytical capabilities at the Northeast Science Station so that sample export would be unnecessary.  The capability to conduct near real-time analyses at a field site also provides critical feedback that helps guide subsequent field activities.  We highlight some of the key improvements below, which are greatly aiding the research being conducted as part of the Polaris Project and will also benefit other Russian and international research teams.  Funding for these Station upgrades has been provided by two grants from the US National Science Foundation as well as from the Woods Hole Research Center.  I can’t help but wonder whether, at over 68 deg. North, the Northeast Science Station holds the record as the northern-most home for all of these instruments!  In any case, it is an oasis in the Siberian Arctic.

Shimadzu Total Organic Carbon and Total Nitrogen Analyzer (NSF-OPP)

This instrument is central to much of our research on dissolved organic matter transport and transformations.  We hope to analyze ~1000 dissolved organic carbon and total dissolved nitrogen samples on this instrument over the next few weeks.  In the past we would have only been able to bring a subset of these samples back to the US for analysis – now we will have the data before returning home.

Horiba Fluoromax-4 Spectrofluorometer (NSF-DUE)

This cutting edge instrument promises to yield fundamental new insights about sources and sinks of organic matter in the Kolyma watershed.

Shimadzu UV-1800 Spectrophotometer (NSF-OPP)

This instrument will also be used for characterization of dissolved organic matter.  Combined with the Fluormax-4 and the Shimadzu TOC/TN analyzer, these instrument give the Polaris Project students and PIs remarkable new analytical capabilities.

Biotek Microplate Spectrophotometer (Woods Hole Research Center)

Muffle Furnaces, two (NSF-OPP)

Drying Oven (NSF-OPP)

Balances, two (NSF-OPP)

Stereo Microscope (NSF-OPP)

Multiple YSI Water Quality Meters (NSF-OPP, other)

Geopump Peristaltic Pump (NSF-OPP)

Aquaflor and Turbidity Meter

Watersheds influence the water quality of aquatic ecosystems. We hope to answer three questions concerning how Siberian watersheds influence lake ecosystems. First, we want to find out how different topography and types of vegetation in the watershed affect the levels of carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorous soil releases into groundwater. Second, we want to find out if the age of the permafrost affects the levels of nutrients being released into the water. Finally, we want to find out if and how the nutrients the soil releases into groundwater affect carbon processing rates inside Siberia’s thermokarst lakes.

Sam and I spent today gathering and preparing equipment, finalizing our plans, overcoming unforeseen glitches, and setting up our workspace. Luckily, everything’s gone pretty smoothly so far and we’re almost ready to start processing samples!

PS- Mom, you were right, it was hot here (90 degrees!). And the heat made the mosquitoes and horseflies ravenous for Polaris blood. Luckily for us, the temperature has dropped a good 50 degrees since yesterday, sending at least the horseflies into hibernation.

PPS- I also caught my first fish- ever!

The barge is prime fishing territory

The Stream Team

This year, we will continue to study nutrient demand in streams, but also try to assess how carbon transformations in these streams may be constrained or limited by nutrient availability. Travis will be studying how carbon and nutrients change over the length of the stream. Erin will be studying the metabolism of carbon in a series of lab experiments that manipulate the carbon and nutrient concentration to try to understand whether these cycles are connected. Kate will be studying the possible carbon inputs into streams, and attempting to understand what sources are most labile in the stream environment. As a group, we will also be performing whole system experiments that will tie our projects together. We hope that our projects provide a broad understanding of how carbon is transformed and transported in stream ecosystems.

We are excited for our first field day tomorrow! We will be sampling a stream at an experimental site in the area and testing out our methods. We can’t wait to get started! Erin, Kate, and Travis

Then, just before lunch, we were sitting at one of the tables discussing how excited we are to work with Bill on figuring out why it is exactly that the amount of carbon available for bacteria to consume is 5% (hence our team name) at all parts of the watershed studied. We plan on looking at what role temperature, salinity, and bacterial composition have on how carbon is processed.

Suddenly, our excitement about science was eclipsed when we realized we could see lots of new scenery out of the window. Or, to be more specific, we could now see the swimming area from one window of the common room and the satellite dish from the other. The stern cable was somehow gone and we were now drifting with only the tether at the bow to hold us to shore. In spite of the setback though, we got the hungry team aboard safely for a delicious lunch and our hardworking crew had everything set right in no time at all.

The stern mooring broke free and the barge swung diagonally to the side of the river

Before we knew it, we were swimming around our usual spot, enjoying the warm weather while we still can!

Andrew, Melissa, and Cassandra

1)      Instead of band posters decorating the walls, there is satellite imagery of the area.

2)      The fish tank is filled with species caught from the river we’re living on.

3)      Our windows overlook our various study sites.

4)      The roof is ornamented with an oversized, Soviet-era satellite (convenient for finding your way back from the field).

5)      Daily life cannot begin or continue without a cup of coffee.

6)      There are approximately 37 pairs of XtraTufs boots in the doorway, and matching bug shirts lying around the common room.

7)      The walls are kept white so that we can project our data presentations onto them at all times.

8)      “The pantry” refers to the room where all our field equipment is stored.

9)      The fridge is not used for storing food, but instead is stocked with samples.

10)   You hope and pray for snow in July to knock back the mosquito hoards.

Going into the project I anticipated the amazing research and field experience that I would gain, and trust me I have in no way been disappointed, but already its turned out to be so much more. The research is one thing, it’s more exciting, invigorating and in depth than I ever imagined, but the opportunity and resource that comes from being in such close quarters with this kind of scientific community is something I think I’ve fallen in love with! My fellow students have a drive for common passions that is encouraging and driving to my own. And really it’s nerdy but awesome to go from chatting about the latest movie release to discussing the creation processes of the lakes we happened to be flying over! We’re all so different and from all over the US, but the Polaris Project has brought us together!

The connection with the PIs of the project was an aspect I never realized would be so life influencing. The extensive amount of down time while traveling and now the close quarters allows for almost constant conversation on everything from general science and current research to future schooling, and career opportunities. Their wealth of knowledge is eye opening and somewhat life changing (at least life plan changing)! Already the plans I thought I had for myself are shifting and I am beyond excited about it! Plus, all the PIs are really cool people and down time on the barge with this group is always fun.

And it’s only the beginning! Already I have experiences I’ll treasure forever and some silly stories to tell as well (such as my inability to read Cyrillic leading to yogurt in my morning tea!) and I can’t wait to present and share the research we do here as well as my personal experiences.

Melissa

P.S. It’s beautiful here

Within twenty minutes of arriving, sweaty from moving bags and overwhelmed by the bugs, we jumped off the back of the barge into the cool of the Panteleikha. The water is a little chilly, but not as cold as I anticipated an arctic river would be (according to Melissa it is warmer than Lake Tahoe). Under the warm sun, surrounded by forests and abandoned ships, it sunk in that I was really here. I am in the Siberian Arctic. While it is still warm ( the forecast predicts another few days) we are taking every opportunity to swim, and with twenty-four hours of daylight, there is ample opportunity.

Today found us in Yakutsk (yes, as in the Risk territory) where we visited a permafrost station/museum. We escaped the surprising Siberian heat aboveground with a very refreshing tour belowground. For the first time I got to feel Russian in a very large coat with an oversized fur collar. Other than our variety of tourist activities, I have been thinking a lot about the science that is to come. Although I have not pinpointed a project, I know that whatever I end up doing will be interesting. The hard part is narrowing it down given the wide variety of possibilities and interests of the other students and PIs. It is a little intimidating although hopefully in the days to come I will be able to focus in on one thing. I look forward to getting to the station tomorrow to see what it is actually like. Alright, time for bed so I can wake up bright and early for our plane tomorrow.

I couldn’t have imagined a better introduction to Russia then the one we received just minutes after flying across the border from Finland. A lucky break in the cloud cover gave my side of the plane an incredible view of St. Petersburg. Even from that altitude it was possible to make out the bridges across the Neva and the sharply angled walls of the Peter and Paul fortress. Just when I thought it couldn’t get much better, the wing dipped and we banked lazily around the city for a final, panoramic view.

The airports have offered great opportunities to practice my conversational skills. Some exchanges have been practical like finding places in the airport while others have just been over the top. While waiting for our flight to Yakutsk we were approached by two unusually outgoing Russians. I explained where we were headed and the purpose of the trip, we stumbled through some Gulag jokes, and when Ivan, our student from Moscow State University arrived, things began to get really interesting. Oleg and Viacheslav then proceeded to claim that they drank ten liters of vodka on their flight and that in spite of this handicap were planning on driving to a restaurant. They insisted we should come with them for food, songs, and, of course, more vodka. Reluctant to take no for an answer from us, we eventually settled on a compromise that the next time we find ourselves in Moscow we’ll take them up on their offer. They shared a few more thoughts such as the importance of living in the moment and how Germans make the best cars but Russians the best tanks and then went on their way, leaving us to explain to the rest of the group just what exactly this boisterous exchange had been about.
I feel incredibly fortunate to finally be here and Russia has already exceeded my expectations. I have a feeling we’ve just scratched the surface though.

До свидания

Andrew

Our first full day in Russia! We arrived last night after 15 hours on planes, first from Seattle to Washington DC, then on to Moscow. The road that led us away from the airport gave us our first taste of the Russian countryside. Trees lined the highway, and billboards flashed ads from either side. Twenty story condo-blocks towered over the streets. Industry seems widely spread, instead of concentrated in districts as it is in the States.  Smokestacks towered every few blocks. I was reminded that communism, like the capitalism that has largely supplanted it here, is an industrial way of life.

We made our way to the “Hotel-Like Structure,” our lodging for the night – a tenement block much like the others, but spruced up for our occupation. The cafeteria downstairs served us meatball and potato soup and much more – tasty food!

The trees here are just slightly different – recognizable, but subtly different. 100-foot oaks spread their limbs wide outside the door. A small bird with white and black striped head hovered and swooped, gathering materials for its nest.

We, on the other hand, left our huge bags behind and traipsed off to Red Square, the iconic center of Moscow that is home to monuments such as the Kremlin and Lenin’s mausoleum. We toured inside St. Basil’s Cathedral, decorated with 14th century mosaics and topped by technocolor onion domes. A quartet sang in errie latin that echoed around the cavernous chamber.

After a much-deserved 10 hours of sleep, we packed up, threw our bags in a bus and took off for the airport, where we are now. A seven hour flight, and we will be in Yakustk – one step closer to Cherskiy, the barge, and our home for the next 3 months weeks.

Riding the bus to Red Square. Very tired.

This morning, we woke up full of energy and ignoring the fact that our days and nights have been switched. Then we had an round of Academic Speed Dating – sharing project ideas and learning more about ongoing researc h around Cherskiy.

After a good Russian lunch of new foods and really hot tea we got back on the bus for, unbelievably, another 7 hour flight to get across Russia from Moscow to Yakutsk. We’re looking forward to getting to Cherskiy and settling into our barge home.

More updates soon!

The New Kids (Melissa, Kate, Emily, Cassandra, Elliot, Sam, Andrew, Max, and Lydia)

It has been fabulous to meet and converse with the new students. They have already drummed up some great project questions and it looks like there will be a nice amount of overlap in terms of interests. It is cool to have a different perspective from our last trip and be able to see the similarities in our past selves.

Since we are looking back, we’d like to say that we miss the company of our past Polaris mateys. Max, we miss your man-prees. Kayla, we miss your exhaustingly slow yogurt eating. Moira, we miss your unplaceable accent. Nikoli, we miss your perpetual sneezing and full camo outfit. Karill, we really really miss your metallica alarm. Brian, we miss the constant your obsession with Wilco. Claire, we miss the strength of your filter pumping arms.

More to come about projects – we are very excited to get to Cherskiy!

With love,

Travis, Erin, Joanne, and Blaize

Over the next few hours, our group will grow to 25 people (hopefully!), and at 4:50 pm we’ll depart together for Moscow.  We’ll arrive in Moscow at 11 am on Saturday, Aug. 3, spend the night there, and then depart for Yakutsk on the evening of July 4th.  We’ll also pick up another participant in Moscow, so we’ll be 26 then.  After an overnight flight (6 more time zones), we’ll arrive at 6 am in Yakutsk on Tuesday July 5.  We’ll then spend one night in Yakutsk (picking up one more person so we’ll be 27), then finally fly to Cherskiy on Wednesday July 6.  Wow – it is now Friday and we’ll be flying until next Wednesday!    So far so good…

We will be studying the forests in the general vicinity of the Northeast Science Station, in Cherskiy. Our work is part of a project funded by NASA that seeks to understand the impacts of fire on boreal forests. Specifically, we are interested in understanding how the severity of a fire affects post-fire forest regeneration. Field observations made in Alaska by Michelle’s group suggest that more severe fires alter post-fire succession, resulting in the presence of more deciduous trees. In Scott’s group we are linking this information with satellite observation in order to understand how changing fire regimes may impact the composition of boreal landscapes, and also using it to model changes in ecosystem carbon fluxes associated with changes in fire severity. The next step is to achieve a similar level of understanding for Siberian boreal forests. Most all of our group also studies tundra ecosystems and so we’ll be interested in many of the other research activities going on while we’re there too.

I think it is safe to say that we’re all pretty enthused to be traveling to Cherskiy with the Polaris group – I know I am.

As Melissa mentioned in her post, this past week the UNR Polaris crew was up at Castle Lake, Northern California training for our Siberian field work. Surprisingly, even though it’s late June the lake was still frozen and we pitched our tents on the snow!

We all had a great time up there in the beautiful, unseasonal winter wonderland, and came back better prepared and with new ideas for the field.

Despite the excitement of commencement and reunion, the Carleton College website found room to publish a story I wrote about the Polaris Project. You can check it out here:

http://apps.carleton.edu/news/features/?story_id=644697

Thanks to Chris Linder for the photo selection!

In other news, after the whirlwind of ending my time at Carleton and working as a class host for reunion, I can now focus my attention on preparing for the Polaris Project. Currently, I am trying to get my hands on an official Bug Shirt (no venture to the Arctic should be done without one) and some solid boots. On a more academic note, I have been reviewing some past papers and reading about some new techniques that we might be able to employ this July.

To my fellow Polaris peers, I can’t wait to see you in a weeks time! Don’t forget to bring a couple good paperbacks and hot sauce!

  <– Clearly we need to get out of the lab more.  We are acid washing because we want to minimize, or eliminate, trace residues from previous samples that would affect the samples we will take in Russia.  The acid is VERY strong stuff  (10%  concentrated HCL solution) and removes pretty much anything leftover on the vials.

           Our other research has been based on previous projects both of us have done here at St. Olaf, and examined landscape patterns in anaerobic respiration potentials in soils.  While we are still collecting data and have a long way to go, we’ve already seen hints of patterns with regards to soil microbial activity via improvised BOD assays. 

We are SO EXCITED to depart!

-Sam and Erin

On another note I have begun to get all my gear together to pack. I plan to bring a big container of peanut butter, as last year there was only one jar in which we had to ration off for the whole month. I brought a fishing pole last year that I hope is still at the station. I have to redeem myself this summer as I came up empty handed last summer. (Kate, I look forward to learning how to flyfish, maybe I will have better luck at that). On my wish list from last summer were shoe/sandals that were easy to slip on with socks and durable for walking on the barge and to the labs, a hooded sweater and gloves that were better fitted to my hand so that I could filter samples while wearing them.

I wish everyone the best with preparing for the trip. See you all soon!

-Blaize

But we couldn’t do it alone! Thanks to the help of Sudeep, his graduate students, and of course Joanne, who’ll be up at Castle working along beside us, we’ve been able to go through the reading list, organize our projects, and work on the skills we need to be efficient and confident in Siberia. So thanks everyone!

I can’t believe the days are going so quickly till it’s time to go! I’m excited to meet all of you and hear what I’m sure are similar stories of hectic preparations!  I’m sure the 11 hour plane ride to Moscow will give us plenty of time to swap stories! See you all there!

Melissa

My name is Jorien Vonk, born & raised in Holland, but I just finished my PhD at Stockholm University a few weeks ago. I have been looking at terrestrial carbon (from thawing permafrost) from a marine point of view; what happens to this material once it arrives in the coastal ocean? We found out that there are large differences between different “pools” of terrestrial carbon. Some pools (e.g. surface soils and recent plant debris) are degrading rapidly to greenhouse gases when they arrive in the coastal system, while other pools (e.g. ancient “yedoma” released through coastal erosio) tend to settle to the sea bottom rather quickly without undergoing much degradation in coastal waters.

Max offered me the amazing opportunity to join the Polaris Project this July (thanks for that!). I have been out on a ship-based expedition close to the Kolyma river mouth, so it will be very exciting to see this place from the land side! I am looking forward to help out and learn from the broad variety of people joining to Cherskiy, and hope to work a bit on my own postdoc project too. See you in a few weeks in Moscow!

Jorien

Piezometers are essentially specialized observation wells to measure the hydraulic head of groundwater. In my case, they’re made of a section of well screen pipe, which is a PVC pipe covered in small slots which allows surrounding water to enter, topped by a section of unslotted PVC pipe to prevent runoff water from entering the well.

Gluing together the piping

After around two hours of measuring, sawing, and gluing the different PVC pipes and fittings, I had five completed piezometers ready to pack and bring to Russia!

In Russia, the piezometers will be buried in the ground, where they will fill with ambient groundwater. Hopefully, these piezometers will allow me to make simple measurements of Shuchi Lake’s hydrologic gradients and collect groundwater samples to measure their chemical properties.

Can’t wait to test them out!
Joanne

At Carleton, I sing in an a capella group and play ultimate frisbee. I also enjoy playing tennis and baking, especially bread. My post-graduation plans are not yet formulated past this summer but I am thinking about taking a break from winter after four years in Minnesota and moving to San Francisco. I am looking forward to sharing this Siberian adventure with all of you this summer.

Both of us are traveling up to Toolik Field Station in Northern Alaska to continue our Arctic research interests! Claire is beginning a Ph.D program at the University of Texas – Marine Science Institute and will be helping collect DOC measurements in small streams near the Toolik Field Station. Her research team is looking at the seasonality of biogeochemistry in Arctic headwater streams. She’s going to be there from May 25th to June 15th. She wishes she was there longer! (Boyd will be there from May 25th to August 5th).

Boyd is working for the USGS this summer as a Field Assistant and Physical Technician under the Arctic LTER (Long-term Ecological Research) collaborative project. He will be helping collect soil moisture, surface roughness, stable isotope data in freshwater pools, and species distribution in the Anaktuvuk River Fire burn scar, the largest tundra burn in recorded history that took place on the North Slope in 2007.  He will also be collecting data for his Master’s Thesis next year.  Both Boyd and Claire get to ride up together in the NSF truck on a 10-hour ride on the Dalton Highway from Fairbanks to Toolik!!!!! Clark unite!

We will keep all of you updated on our travels and the research we are conducting whilst in Alaska. We want to congratulate all of the new students on their admission into the Polaris Project – it is such an AMAZING opportunity and we guarantee you will have a great experience. We wish you the best of luck and if you have any questions please contact us!

Boyd Zapatka – Clark University ’10
Claire Griffin – Clark University ’10

It is Cassandra and Blaize, we are writing to you from Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts.  Cassandra and I got together to start to plan, prepare and talk about the trip. We thought we would share a little about ourselves:

I’m Cassandra, this is my first post for the Polaris Project, but I’m very, very excited to be going on this research trip.  I am a sophomore Environmental Science major concentrating on Earth Systems Science.   I live in Georgia, Vermont when I’m not here at school, which is only about five minutes from the Canadian border (so I’m used to pretty cold weather).  I absolutely love to bake and cook for my family and anyone else who will let me.  I really look forward to meeting all of you and getting to travel again!  I went on a Europe trip in my year off before college and haven’t gone anywhere too exciting since.  I’m a little nervous, but definitely looking forward to the experience!

I’m Blaize, I went on the trip last summer and will be returning again this summer! I am a senior Environmental Science major concentrating on Earth Systems Science and minor in Geography. I will be staying at Clark to get my Master’s next year in Geographical Information Science. I am excited to have the opportunity to return, since I had such a great experience last year.  I can’t wait to meet all the new members and to experience more exhilarating research adventures this summer. I am also looking forward to eating moose, improving my Russian and listening to Erin sing to the guitar.

We both look forward to a great summer of field research and can’t wait for the trip to begin!

My name is Melissa Robbins and I’m a junior at the University of Nevada-Reno where I major in Environmental Science with minors in ecohydrology and wildlife. Most of my studies and the work I do focuses on freshwater management, ecology, and conservation. However, I wish there where more marine science classes as that’s what I really want to study! They’re hard to come by here in the desert though. I don’t have an exact plan of what I’ll be researching in Russia quite yet, but I hope to focus on fish movement with a possible invasive species aspect.

I’ve never been out of the country before. The longest plane ride I’ve ever been on was Nevada to Texas, so this whole experience will be new and exciting! I’m expecting jet lag and maybe even being a little overwhelmed by new countries and people, but I really can’t wait for the experience and the opportunity to go out in the field and work!

In my free time I love to swim (although I’m not sure I’ll get to do that in Russia! Cold water!!), sit and socialize with people, or trek in the outdoors, so I’m looking forward to getting to know all of you and starting this adventure!

That said, even though we don’t leave for another three months, it’s never too early to prepare yourself for the oncoming invasion. Especially if you want to spread out the expense of any gear you may need to purchase. A Bug Shirt is a MUST for all. Make sure you order and bring one (http://www.bugshirt.com/); you won’t regret it.

We also found that roll-on mosquito repellent works best on the remaining exposed areas, especially your hands. Trust me, nothing is worse than trying to do field work while swatting away a relentless stream of blood-thirsty mosquitoes attacking your hands!

Best of luck in preparing yourselves! If you have any questions on what to bring or how to prepare, feel free to ask me or any of the returning students!
~Joanne

My name is Elliot Vaughan and I am a junior at Carleton College in Minnesota.  I am majoring in biology and also take a lot of Spanish classes (which will probably not be all that useful this summer).  The majority of my ecological field research has involved waking up very early to map and observe birds by myself  so I am excited to spend time doing more ecosystems-based research with a group.

While this will be my first time to Russia, I was fortunate enough to spend 4o days canoeing through the Canadian Arctic the summer after high school and I have been wanting to return to the Arctic ever since. In addition to spending a lot of time canoeing I also play hockey and like to fish.  I’m already excited for July and look forward to getting to know all of you.

I just got back from an 8-day trip to remote corners of Utah, doing some rock climbing, hiking, and connecting with the natural world. It is somewhat traumatic to come back to the city after an experience like that, so I am still adjusting. Here is a photo from Capitol Reef National Park.

I look forward to meeting all of you in person.

Take care,
Max Wilbert

In my free time I enjoy hiking and running but if the weather isn’t cooperative then you’ll find me with a history book.  This trip will be the first time I spend a night outside of the US and I’m very excited to get to Russia.

I’m looking forward to learning more about everyone and eventually meeting you!

This won’t be my first time traveling out of the country. I have been many places in the U.S. and also had the experience to travel to England and Germany. However, I have never been to Russia so I’m very excited for this opportunity to explore a new culture. I have done a lot of horse packing in the emigrant wilderness in California, but getting to work in Siberia will give a whole new meaning to remote.

My interests include horseback riding, ice-skating, trout fishing and playing tennis. I just recently learned to snowboard and wakeboard which I loved and hope to do more of in the future. And I’m sorry Erin, but unfortunately I don’t play the guitar. In the meantime I’m thrilled to be going on this trip and I can’t wait to meet everyone!

My name is Sam Dunn, I am Junior at St. Olaf College majoring in Biology with a concentration in Environmental Studies.  I’ve previously done work in streams and wetlands with methane and nitrous oxide flux, but for my time in Siberia I am thinking about the functional diversity of tundra plants and how they affect the movement of Carbon et al. towards a sink.

This is my first time traveling abroad (apart from a few trips to Canada) and I am extremely excited to get meet all of you and get to Cherskiy.  If anyone has been wondering what the weather has been like there recently, take a look:

http://www.weather.com/weather/today/RSXX1621

Cheers!

Boyd, Blaize, Moira, Claire, Erin, and Travis have pretty much summarized was happened at the conference in their posts. It was exciting to listen to and meet scientists in the field, and I came home with new information, perspectives, and research ideas. I would like to add that attending the conference made me realize how important Arctic science is going to be in the coming years, both in terms of science and international policy. Approaching the Arctic from the perspective of a scientist, it’s sometimes easy to forget that the physical and ecological changes we are studying have profound consequences on the people living there and nations with economic, political, and security interests in the region. As we carry forward with our research, we should remember the social implications behind our science.

To introduce myself, my name is Joanne Heslop and I am a sophomore double majoring in ecohydrology and environmental studies at the University of Nevada, Reno. Watersheds and their soils are a nutrient source to lake ecosystems. The delivery of these nutrients to the lake could change rates of carbon cycling and methane production. This coming summer, I will be studying patterns in soil soluble nutrient leaching potentials within the Shuchi Lake watershed and how the addition to these nutrients to the lake could change carbon cycling rates.

Beautiful Shuchi Lake

New students should feel free to contact me with any questions on what to expect! I look forward to meeting the new students and seeing everyone again in July!

I would also like to use this post to welcome the new Polaris Project students and to introduce myself. First, I’m extremely excited to meet all the new students and I just have to tell you that you’re in for an amazing and fulfilling adventure. The Polaris Project is like nothing I’ve ever done. You are about to travel to a very special place, one that very few people ever get to see in their lifetime let alone know anything about. It will be your role to share what you learn while studying and living in this remote and beautiful place. That said, arm yourself well against mosquitos.

My name is Travis Drake and I am currently a senior Geology major at Carleton College. My interest in the Polaris Project started when I took Arctic Systems Science from Max Holmes when he was a visiting professor at Carleton. Last summer, I worked with fellow returning student Erin Seybold and professor John Schade to profile the biogeochemical processing of small streams around Cherskii. Specifically, I explored the role of transient storage (the retention of solutes in hyporheic sediments or surficial features such as eddies and pools) on processing rates. This summer, I plan on continuing this work, and expanding the scope of our project. To the new students: if this is something that interests you, please feel free to contact either Erin or me! We would love to expand the stream team!

Like Erin said, reuniting with the Polaris Project at the recent conference in Miami only made me more excited to return to Siberia. I can’t wait to head back and to share in this awesome journey will the new group.

The past week was GREAT. Attending the State of the Arctic conference was a perfect way to start off this field season. Presenting our research from last year was a great experience, and the opportunities to network were really valuable and gave me a lot of ideas for improving my project this summer. Above all it made me so excited to start again! 4 days of brand new research and new questions made me really want to leave for Cherskiy tomorrow and get started. Do I really need to finish this school year?

To introduce myself, I’m Erin from St. Olaf College in Minnesota. Last year as one of the members of the Stream Team (aka the Dream Team), my project looked at the nutrient limitation of small streams and the potential for them to act as active processors of DOC. This year I will be continuing that project with some new questions and methods. Working with Travis, we are trying to understand how much nutrient uptake and carbon processing is occurring in streams, how this interacts with the physical hydrology of the stream (Travis’s territory) and how much this might change as discharge increases or decreases with climate change.

As for interesting tidbits about me, I love to sing (please tell me someone plays guitar!), nordic ski, and play sand volleyball and frisbee. I am a coffee addict, really  like to cook, and love eating grapefruits, which are unfortunately in short supply in Cherskiy. I spent last fall semester in India, and as a consequence adore spicy food and all things Bollywood.

Reconnecting with all you lovely Polaris people was wonderful – I can’t wait to see you again, and best of luck with all the interesting things you are setting out to do. To the new Polaris students – I am excited to meet all of you! You are setting out on a crazy adventure and we are so excited to see it all again with you!

I really enjoyed getting to meet with others in the Arctic community, and start making connections that may be useful in the future.  Next year, I’ll be starting my PhD at the University of Texas Marine Science Institute, and this was a great opportunity to meet with my future advisor to discuss what happens next.  I’ll be on the North Slope of Alaska, at the Toolik Field Station for a couple weeks this summer, helping out on a project assessing the seasonality of small rivers in the region – its so exciting to be going back to the Arctic!  Polaris has been great in so many ways, but two things really stick out as being most important to me.  For one, I now know that the Arctic is where I want to be – not necessarily living there (I’m from Texas, the cold scares me!), but researching and learning about this remote, beautiful place.  The group of people that I’ve met through Polaris Project, though, is probably one of the best aspects of the experience.  We may not all end up doing Arctic research, but I think our shared experience will always help us keep in touch, and possibly work together in the future!

A typical day at the conference begins bleary-eyed at 8:30 with a breakfast of tropical fruit, croissants, and COFFEE while listening to presentations introducing the themes of the day:

Day One: An overview of the physical and social components of Arctic research
Day Two: Understanding and predicting changes in the Arctic system and their feedbacks to the global earth system
Day Three: Translating research into solutions

Later in the day we break up into parallel sessions for which we scramble from room to room trying to listen to as many of the different fascinating talks as possible. There are generally four simultaneous sessions – so we hope that a friend will tell us about the ones we miss! Throughout the day we have breaks to socialize, network, and eat delicious cheese. On day two there was a lunch for students to meet with faculty mentors and ask burning questions. The topics ranged from life lessons about science to how to write a grant.

Break’s over! Back to soaking up knowledge under the Miami sun!

I was able to present at a poster session regarding my research on boreal forest fire detection with radar and optical imagery and was provided some useful feedback. My research questions are very observational and exploratory so it’s nice to hear of some new methodologies and constructive suggestions on how to answer some of my biggest questions.

This is also been a great opportunity for me to meet and network with new students and scientists – the conference has set up a nice mentoring program and I’ve been able to meet several different professors in different fields of study. I’m employed by the USGS to work at Toolik Field Station in northern Alaska for the summer of 2010 and it has been great reconnecting with the Polaris team and meeting with some team members on my new project. The Polaris Project was my first research experience in the Arctic and I’m excited to continue research in the Arctic and hope to stay in touch with my team, last year’s time, and future Polaris teams.

The students, listed below, will soon be asked to make an introductory post to the blog.  Congratulations to all of them!

====================

NEW STUDENTS

Andrew Crowley – Holycross College

Ivan Dubinenkov – Moscow State University

Sam Dunn – St. Olaf College

Kate Lewis – Western Washington University

Mellisa Robbins – Univ. Nevada Reno

Lydia Russell-Roy – Carleton College

Emily Ulrich – University of Nevada Reno

Elliot Vaughan – Carleton College

Cassandra Volatile-Wood – Clark University

Max Wilbert – Western Washington University

RETURNING STUDENTS

Blaize Denfeld – Clark University

Travis Drake – Carleton College

Joanne Heslop – Univ. Nevada Reno

Erin Seybold – St. Olaf

In addition to the 14 undergraduate students and 7 faculty, we will also have 2 affiliated postdoctoral scientists this year; Paul Mann – an English postdoc working with Max Holmes at the Woods Hole Research Center, and Jorien Vonk – a Dutch graduate student just finishing her PhD at Stockholm University.  Both Paul and Jorien will work with Polaris Project students as well as undertake their own research projects.

After countless hours of work, Chris Linder has completed a 10-minute video that follows the Polaris Project during the 2009 field course.  The video can be accessed from the “Stories” page of this website.  Chris did a fantastic job – I really think that the video will help others get a better understanding of the “Polaris Project Experience”.

We have high-resolution versions of the video available on DVD.  You can request a free DVD. You can also get a hi-res version from Vimeo here.

Thanks to all participants for making the Polaris Project what it is – and to Chris Linder for doing such a great job of capturing it in this multimedia piece.

Max Holmes

Blaize and Claire

Sudeep Chandra (professor) and Joanne Heslop (student) from the University of Nevada- Reno have done a fantastic job of “getting the story out” since returning from Siberia at the end of July.  Just this week, they’ve been on TV, radio, and in the newspaper!  Links are pasted below:

1) Report on KNPB PBS TV station

(http://www.knpb.org/programming/local/knpb-reports/studying-arctic-carbon).

2) Front-page article in the Reno Gazette Journal newspaper

(http://www.rgj.com/article/20090818/NEWS/908180333).

3) Interview of KPR NPR radio station – to be archived later at:

(http://www.capradio.org/programs/insight/default.aspx).

The Polaris project begins and ends with science, but the science is just the beginning. In our final reflections in Moscow, I think Max Janicek summed it up perfectly when he said, “it’s the people that make the experience so special.” I couldn’t agree more and I couldn’t have asked for a more fun, smart, or compatible group then we had this summer. I was deeply moved by our group’s final reflections because I think they really brought home why the Polaris Project is so unique. The Polaris Project is scientific collaboration at a level I’ve never experienced, where deep friendship is fostered alongside learning. For this reason, my time in Cherskii was not simply a field trip and some notes. It was a defining and influential experience in my life because of the relationships and connections I made with the other students and professors.

Walking through the moss covered larch forests and next to snow patches in the tundra was unbelievable. The beauty of the landscape never waned over my time there and by the end I felt like I was leaving home. Throughout college, we have many “homes” including where we grew up, apartments over the summer, dorms, off-campus houses etc. I guarantee few people ever call a barge sitting on the Kolyma River in Siberia a home. How incredible is that?

My stream project with Erin and John was very exciting, and like the other students, there is much more work ahead. Looking back, I am very grateful for the encouragement and guidance provided to me by all of the PIs. The students were truly lucky to have each and every professor for their unique expertise and enthusiasm. I was always surprised by the immediacy with which they could satisfy any question that I had. You cannot learn like this from a lecture or a textbook. Many times my conversations with the PI’s pertained to the science we were doing, but they were often about the paths that led them to be arctic scientists. As a result, I’m more interested in arctic science than ever before, I can definitely see myself pursuing this field of science.

The whole time was remarkable, and I am so thankful that I had a chance to meet all the PI’s and students. The trip definitely surpassed my expectations and I just felt like reiterating some of the reasons why it meant so much to me in this reflection.

Thank you to all the friends I made in Cherskii who provided me with such a unique and unforgettable experience.

Travis

PS There was a great 2-part article on Siberia in the last two issues of the New Yorker. You can’t read it unless you subscribe, but here’s a pretty neat slideshow by the photographer.

http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14119825

During our three weeks in Cherskiy, Valentin, Nickolay, and I collected over 130 soil samples from 14 different profile locations. Our profiles were located around four main regions: Shuchi Lake, Duvanni Yar, the Kolyma River floodplain, and the tundra.

Shuchi Lake Profiles

Kolyma River Floodplain Profiles

Duvanni Yar Profiles

Tundra Profiles

At the Northeast Science Station labs, Nickolay and I processed our soil samples for moisture and organic matter content. We also conducted nutrient leaching experiments, in which we added one liter of distilled water to ten grams of soil and let it incubate for twenty-four hours. The water was then filtered and stored for later testing.

Even though all the members of the Polaris Project are back home, work on our projects hasn’t ended. Over the next semester, I’m going to be continuing our project by testing the leachate water for carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorous content. By determining the nutrient levels leached from the soil into the distilled water, I hope to be able to determine the nutrient leaching potential for soils at our profiles. I’ll also be measuring the carbon to nitrogen ratio in each of our soil samples.

Overall, being a participant in the Polaris Project has been one of the most amazing experiences I’ve had in my life. It’s reaffirmed my love of field work, and confirmed to me that I want to spend the rest of my professional life pursuing a career in research science.

Until later, Joanne

The field work we’ve done in Siberia was at times intense or frustrating, but the rewards so far outweigh those brief lows that I can’t imagine wanting to do anything else. This was truly a life changing experience, just as advertised. Max did an amazing job organizing a team of great PI’s, who have all helped me to think more scientifically, to communicate better and exposed me to new methods and techniques of going about the science. I’d guess that all of us students, even if we aren’t all planning to go on to do research per se, have come out of this project better scientists and communicators, motivated to find out more about the Arctic and to spread the word about what we’ve learned.

I made it back to my home in Bellingham a mere 32 hours after waking up in Moscow and in time to make breakfast for my kids.

All of the field course participants face the challenge of describing our experiences to our friends and family and adjusting to life back in the USA. Congrats to all on a job well done and thanks to all following our trip. We’ll be tidying up some loose ends over the next few weeks and expect to see some good science and outreach on the blog again soon.

-Andy Bunn

Many days have been cool and overcast and the warmth of the fire our first comfort when returning home.  The “banya” or sauna on barge is a source of heat and entertainment on a cold day.  Described as the first thing that was constructed on the barge, the sauna means a hot place to sit then a really hot shower.  On a warmer day, it means a heating up and then taking a swim off the barge in the Panteleikha.

Sometimes, we even make a little fire to warm wet socks when we’re in the field for an extended amount of time.

We’ve been lucky to have our cook, Valentina this year constantly chiefing up some fantastic meals.  What ever she is cooking fills the barge with a new aroma, yesterday it was apricot rolls and often time it is onion and dill.  Dill is never on short supply.  When we are leaving for a long boat ride, she will scan to ensure adequate layers and then give anyone deemed under-dressed her full-length sweater vest.

We’ve gotten to try the delicacy of fish dried whole, peeled and eaten in it’s salty goodness.

In the evenings or when the barge was mobile, we’ve had the chance to pass the guitar around, listen to and sing along with songs in both Russian and English.

A sound I will never forget is the buzzing of mosquitoes past your ear… all the time.  In the morning laying in bed, walking to a field site, walking to the lab, filtering water, sifting for bugs, eating diner, whenever really.  The worst is when you get one in your head net.  In this case, Max caught this ambitious mother a little late.

There is never a shortage of breathtaking sights.  This arctic iris was found north on the Kolyma during one of our stops.

We have frequent visits from the ‘wildlife’ in the area.  Nelson is one of the two dalmations in eastern Siberia.

The sound of skipping rocks on the water plunked throughout lunchtime on our way to the tundra.

The feelings on the barge right now are many and mixed,  as people work feverishly to finish their projects and we prepare to leave our Siberian home and science  family.  We are all trying to soak in the little details that make up these vivid experiences.  Feeling the cotton grass between our fingers while we can…

Yesterday morning, after a brief breakfast, we strapped on the life vests and headed north along the Kolyma River. Along the way, we stopped at a few points to refuel and sample some smaller streams that fed into the Kolyma.

These breaks allowed us to better see how the landscape and ecosystems changed as we ventured into higher latitudes. The larch trees became sparser, many of the dwarfed willows and larch disappeared, and the peat groundcover was being outcompeted by grasses. Further north, we passed small snow patches that clung to the north side of the hills, avoiding some exposure to the sun. The banks had changed from eroding Yedoma soils to exposed rocky headlands. Most noticeably, the Boreal forest had transformed into sprawling grassland. The mosquitoes had diminished, we could see the contours of the landscape, and the cool breeze brought in the fresh arctic air. We made it to the tundra.

Personally, the tundra is one of the most special places I’ve seen. I have been above the altitudinal treeline multiple times but crossing the latitudinal treeline is something not many people have a chance to experience. After a brief but intense snowball fight, we settling into a spot on the bank of a small stream filled with Arctic Greyling. We tried our hand at fishing them out, with some having more luck than others. Our return trip south was beautifully accented by the brief sunset, with the sun just dipping below the horizon and then reemerging. There aren’t many places where you can experience sunset and sunrise within 25 minutes.

Today, we are in a bit of a frenzy. We’re wrapping up our sampling and trying to run any remaining experiments. On top of this, we were excited to see our project featured on the New York Time’s DotEarth blog. So, as we race around tying up loose ends, we’re trying to respond to reader’s questions and comments. It’s been a great couple of days.

You can get to Revkin’s story here.

When the Northeast Science Station was developed more than two decades ago, careful consideration was given to its geographic location.  It is strategically positioned within a day’s trip to a vast array of Arctic ecosystem types including boreal forests, tundra, mountainous uplands, wetlands, lakes, small streams, large rivers, estuaries, and even the coastal Arctic Ocean.  Our student projects span the entire range of these ecosystems, providing the overlap necessary to understand how carbon moves through the Kolyma River basin, from source to sink.  The student projects are bookended by projects focusing on upland permafrost and peatland soils (carbon sources) through to the Kolyma Estuary and Arctic Ocean (ultimate carbon sinks).  Additional studies investigating lake and small stream ecosystems (which also transport and modify carbon during this long journey to the ocean) provide an essential bridge for our understanding of the land-atmosphere and land-ocean linkages of carbon.

We are thrilled with the interdisciplinary and complementary nature of this year’s student projects.  Our students will leave Cherskiy with a different piece of the “carbon story” to tell about Northeast Siberia.  Recognizing that communicating scientific results to the general public is one of the most important parts of a researcher’s job, one student project even focuses on science education, media, and outreach.  Over time, we will mosaic our projects together to provide understanding of how climate warming is affecting this small, yet extraordinary corner of the planet.

–Karen Frey, Clark University

This study has particular importance to climate science because these grassland ecosystems may help save the permafrost from degradation. Trampling of snow on grassland ecosystems allows the permafrost layer to freeze deeper every winter, and therefore melt less during summer months. It also has a higher albedo, which reduces the heat being absorbed by the earth. So reintroducing large herbivore populations may be a way to stop permafrost thaw and potential CO2 release.

In addition to being an incredible learning experience, we had a really fun time tromping around the grounds. We met a new friend, a cute puppy ironically named Friend in Russian, and enjoyed the different views of the landscape. The whole group also enjoyed learning from the Russian scientists here, who are a wealth of knowledge on this area’s natural history, and excellent boat drivers.

We can’t believe that our time here is almost up. Our research projects are going really well, but everyone is starting to feel the crunch at the end to finish up. The only thing that could possibly top a trip into the Pleistocene would be a trip to the tundra, and we are hoping to get there tomorrow (weather permitting). More updates soon!

Erin and Blaize!

.

• Sudeep’s barrel project allowed us to get intimate with a thermokarst lake…
• …and eaten alive by mosquitoes
• …the lake also broke both of Travis’ Chaco sandals
• …and also broke Max’s immune system
• We finally experienced the Russian tradition of the ‘banya’ (the barge is equipped with a wood-burning sauna/hot water heater/branding iron)

.

• One of our back-of-barge-dangling outhouses fell victim to an unknown fate (toilet thief?)
• We had maybe five straight hotdog based meals
• Each hotdog comes individually wrapped to preserve all its juices
• Americans never tire of hotdogs
• Travis has been demoralized by his Russian chess opponents too many times…
• …apparently chess is a big deal here
• Golden Ceylon tea effectively disguises the hints of gasoline in the river water
• On our return trip from Duvannyi Yar, we enjoyed a few unintentional 360º views of our surroundings
• We also ran out of gas in the middle of the night. Twice.
• Our onboard Russian invalid Nickolay has been nicknamed Nick-coli, get it?
• Porridge can be served in many forms. Try it as a baked dish, with raisins!
• 4 guys + 1 (8’x8’) room + 2 weeks of poor hygiene = stanky livin’
• Thanks to constant bug-searching, Max has cataracts…
• …and Kayla has pinkeye
• Rumor has it, plywood and burlap bedding is not good for the spine

.

• Local paper reads ‘Area man sets new record for single swat mosquitoe kill (13 in one leg slap)…
• …now john has dirty pants
• Everyone’s really pretty dirty, except our photographer Chris, he is well kempt
• Snoring is not muffled by half inch plywood
• It is best to swim upstream of the dangle-potties, excuse me, dangle-potty singular
• Our Russian bunk-mate enjoys waking up to Metallica phone alarms
• We do not enjoy waking up to Metallica phone alarms
• Teaching Kirill that “dank” is another word for “cool” has sparked some confusion
• Despite its unassuming appearance, the barge has become a black hole for numerous items…I think we’ve lost most of our flash drives

.

• We learned the world’s fastest fire-building technique…all it took was some branches, a liter of gasoline, and a boat battery
• Ear plugs, vitamin c, deet, and peanut butter have all become tradable commodities
• Rhodamine dye is not equivalent to Kool-Aid
• Brian Kantor listens to the new Wilco album 5+ times every day
• Having no internet access for 3 days sent the Polaris Project into a tweet-less panic
• We only get our morning porridge if we complete our chores on time
• Our cook forbids socks in the kitchen
• Some stray nails on the barge have reined in our careless mosquito slapping
• The true ingredients of our breakfast ‘sour cream bake’ have yet to be uncovered
• Someone may be using all of our missing flash drives for barter to stock our seemingly endless chocolate supplies
• Nikita Zimov’s 3 year old daughter is arguably the cutest little kid on Earth
• Rumor has it other visiting scientists from the U.S. arrive at the station today. Our pungent aroma should not dispel them from our uncanny good looks
• When it comes to doing impromptu boat engine repairs, Dr. Zimov prefers wood sticks and a hammer.

by Travis and Max

While I’m not on the barge with you guys, I am certainly there in spirit and have been analyzing some ASTER satellite imagery I’m sure Karen and Claire have familiarized you with. I want to wish the team best of luck during that last few days on board the barge and I can’t wait to see pictures and hear stories! And also, good luck with your projects!

- Boyd

We started talking, and I explained my interest in doing interviews here.  Together we designed some questions and I then constructed a survey outline.  Since then, I’ve interviewed locals here at the station, whether summer employees, foreign researchers, or our culinary staff.

Today, I had my best interview yet.  Guided by Marat (a staffed regular here at the station), I interviewed a local fisherman with the help of Valentin (the Russian prof here with us who also serves as my translator).  Beforehand I was a little nervous.  With little experience, interviewing a complete stranger through a translator is a rather intimidating endeavor.  Lucky for me, however, my dice turned out.  I soon found out that this fisherman—I’ll call him George—was an especially gregarious fellow.  I had no trouble chatting, joking, and laughing with him all within a casual yet productive interview.

In the next week or two I hope to do more interviews with locals like George.  It’s quite cool to hear personal accounts/experience of change here in the Arctic.  I certainly hear perspectives that I probably wouldn’t hear in my Minnesota hometown.  For that reason they’re very engaging and useful to me.  These interviews are useful to the Polaris Project too because they reflect the general conception and understanding of climate change and may be useful for guiding our outreach efforts.

All in all, they’re good practice for my interviewing technique.  It’s hard work navigating conversation casually while still maintaining some sense of direction and order for the survey.  Maybe some day I’ll be an environmental anthropologist looking back at these didactic experiences…What fun!

Ta Ta for now.

So excitement ran high as we packed up our equipment, loaded it onto the barge, and headed out. The ride down lasted about 18 hours, and convinced me that travel by barge is by far the best way to go. We used some of the time to catch up on sleep and work, but the best hours were spent wandering the deck, watching the river roll by or singing to John and Andy’s guitar. The Zimovs and André (a boat driver helping on the trip) spent the time wrestling our huge barge downriver on the power of a motorboat. We owe them a lot of gratitude for our easy trip.

We arrived late in the afternoon of the 16^th of July. Looking out we saw one bank rising slowly from green marshy wetlands to lowland brush. The near bank was the one we had come to see: a steep cliff of ice wedges interspersed with crumbling yedoma and crowned by larch forests. We waited until after dinner for our first expedition into this thawing landscape – it’s a good idea to load up on fuel before facing hordes voracious predatory mosquitos. As Brian put it: “Ow! What do they eat when they can’t get hobbit?!”

But neither the gentle pitter-patter of a mosquito rain on our head nets nor Claire and Kiril’s close encounters with mud-based sink holes (rescued from disaster by log bridges and memories of Sergei Zimov’s safety lecture) could diminish our enthusiasm for Duvannyi Yar. Zimov took us up the bank for a short walk along the ridge while he explained how this landscape – now a larch forest – was once a grassland steppe maintained by mammoths, bison, moose, horses, hippos and rhinos. He pointed out the grass sprouting from the crumbling river banks that grew from 10,000 year old seeds. As the bend of the river washes against this bank, it melts the permafrost causing the banks to collapse, but also freeing the remains of a long dead ecosystem. You could say it’s a preview for the future feature-length film “Climate Change and Arctic Thaw” (coming soon to an ecosystem near you).

It’s also a re-run of “Charismatic Megafauna.” The beach was littered with skulls, ribs, teeth, thigh-bones and countless other Pleistocene relics. Ten paces were enough to find bones from at least three different long-extinct animals. My favorites were: mammoth teeth and thigh-bones, a bison shoulder-blade, and a horse hoof. And just to prove that Siberia hasn’t completely lost its charisma, when we turned back for the barge we found four sets of much more recent footprints leading the way. Sometime not too long ago this beach had played host to both adult and juvenile moose and wolf.

The solitary footprints on a beach littered with bones were a poignant reminder of Homo sapiens’s role as an ecosystem engineer: first silencing the thunder of mammoth feet over a frozen steppe then melting the ground from between the roots of the silent forests.

One of the greatest parts about being on this trip is learning and seeing new things. I have had the pleasure of observing a Steller’s Sea Eagle flying above us while we were on the boat, a Great Grey Owl flying low above the Larch trees and an ant mound embedded under lichen. I also got to take my first ever Quad ride around the grounds. I now understand the Russian rule that women should not sit on the iron of the Barge because they believe it may cause infertility. This is strictly enforced with life jacket cushions.

Today, as mentioned in the earlier blog by Erin and Kayla, Moira and I woke up early with Chris to collect some field data. We walked to some ‘water holes’ Chris and I had stumbled upon earlier in the week. The holes were of interests because they contained ice and water, we hypothesized that by sampling them we could have a better idea of the ground water flow into the nearby stream. Once at the site, in the snowy flurries, we filtered all the water out of the holes and brought them back to the lab to be analyzed. We went back to the holes tonight to see if they filled with water, to our excitement they had! This project is put on hold for a little because we are leaving for Duvannyi Yar tonight. We are looking forward to a little change of pace and in particular I am looking forward to sampling water along the main stream of the Kolyma!

Hi everyone. A lot of what I’ve been doing related to the permafrost soil has been the same (digging profiles and processing samples), but I’d like to quickly recount how I built my first warming fire in the Siberian Arctic- Bear Grylls style.

As some of the other blog entries have mentioned, it’s been cold and snowing on and off all day here in Cherskiy. Therefore, while we were out collecting samples, Valentine suggested building a small fire by our sampling site to keep warm. We built up a starter and, four matches later (an impressively small figure considering it was a cold windy Arctic day), we had our fire going.

Until Later- Joanne

1. We’ve added some pictures to the student blog posts again. Here, here, and here for example.

2. Max Holmes, the director of the project who is sadly stayed behind in the USA this year, is diligently moderating comments that folks send in about the blog posts. Please read and comment.

3. If the weather cooperates, we’ll be moving locations from Cherskiy to a site called Duvannyi Yar with amazing permafrost exposure and megafaunal remains that is several hours of steaming upriver. Look here for last year’s pictures. We’ll be gone for three days on this trip and will have limited access to internet and blog updates on this trip. But, we’ll do our best to keep in touch.

I woke up this morning to Erin standing shivering in our room, “It’s so freaking cold.”  Five minutes later we stared out the window as snow swirled by (in sizeable chunks).  We immediately thought of our other two roommates who had woken up this morning to go out in the field to do field work.  Blaize and Moira are yet to return and it is almost breakfast time.  So like the caring concerned roommates we are, we sit down with some cranberry pie, hot tea/coffee and watch the snow fall on the river from inside the warm barge.  We fear our planned trip to Duvannyi Yar this evening by barge may be postponed or cancelled.  Also field work may not be allowed in this cold weather, but we’re still hopeful.

Twenty minutes after 9:00, and the girls are not yet back from their excursion.  Our coffee is gone along with our pie.

Besides this morning, we have been working really hard in the field and in the lab.  Yesterday, the lake team, although down two people, found some of the most exciting invertebrates yet.  We found fresh water clams, an abundance of arthropods (little shrimpies), caddisfly cases and flatworms in Tube Dispenser Lake.  Nikita showed us a new method of collecting a diversity of insects by wrapping birch branches together, sticking them into the lake and returning to shake them out into a bucket.  Using this new “Brakita” method we more than doubled the amount of different taxa we know are in Shuchi Lake.  Sifting through sediment and detritus for bugs until 1:30 in the morning was much more exciting than usual.  So, we are showing a greater diversity and amount of insects in the bigger, deeper lake, Tube Dispenser.  Also, this lake is showing a much greater difference between the eroding and non-eroding side as the lake moves one direction.  What could be the reason for this?

It’s now 9:35 and Moira and Blaize have returned victorious!

The stream team (also know as the X-stream Team) has also had a successful start to our research. Yesterday we did our first salt and nutrient addition at Tube Dispenser Outlet! The experiment went incredibly smoothly, although it took a lot longer than we had expected due to the low discharge of the streams here. It would have been too lucky to have the whole day go well though, and we hit our bump in the road when we got back to the lab. Due to some difficulty reading Russian labels, we were adding the wrong proportion of nutrients to our stream. Once we translated this error, the funky lab results suddenly made sense! So we have adjusted our fertilizer cocktail and have high hopes that it will work better today (if we can get out in the field that is). We hopefully will brave the cold and attempt another addition experiment to Giraffe Lake Outlet today!

Bonus of snow in July: NO MOSQUITOES!

-Erin and Kayla

With that and a spotty connection at the station we are enjoying much better communication this year. We have been uploading photos to go with the student blog posts and will continue to do so a day or so after the posts are made.  We will be encouraging students to post about their research now that all of them have articulated science questions and hypotheses. The caliber of the student research projects is outstanding and all the faculty are blessed to be working with tough, smart, and amiable kids.

Cherskiy!

I’m the resident student geographer on the barge, so my background and project are a little different than the majority of the ecologists here at the Northeast Science Station. Water is a huge part of the Arctic and the landscape is covered with streams, rivers, lakes and ponds. There’s no way to be able to sample and monitor all the water bodies or to regularly look at them to see how they change from year to year or even within a year. So, I’m hoping to be able to use satellite imagery to monitor these lakes from space. This does not mean, however, that I’ll be spending all my time in front of a computer screen (although I have been doing some, just to pinpoint places that look interesting). We still don’t know how to interpret the imagery in a way that will give us information about how much organic matter is floating around in a lake or how clear a river is. My goal is to be able to take as many samples as possible from different water bodies, to create a model to interpret the satellite imagery. Once we know that, we can look at how the water properties change through time and look at the many, many, many lakes in the region that we cannot sample directly. This could give us a better idea of how carbon and organic matter flows through the system as a whole.

I’ve spent the past few days collecting and processing water samples from a nearby lake, so we’re even starting to get some data! The inner (or maybe not-so-inner) geek in me is really excited to begin looking at results and spend time out in the field. We’re getting more today and throughout the next couple weeks from a variety of lakes and rivers in the Kolyma watershed. Unfortunately, I’ve been banished to the lab with the sore throat that’s going around, so I’m not taking any samples, but the great thing about working in a group like this is that we’re very collaborative. We’ll have access to everyone’s data and be able to use it all for our own projects. We’re all making a huge amount of progress, everyone’s methods and projects are pretty much hammered out, and I think we’re all excited to be doing real field work over the past few days!

As far as my project is concerned, things are going pretty well. I’ve been going out collecting soil and pore water samples in alases (these are old thermokarst lake basins where the water has drained away and left wetlands). This is really interesting (and no, I’m not just biased because I have a weird fascination for peatlands) because these areas are the sources of the carbon and nutrients that we are studying in the streams and lakes in the area. As water flows through these soils it absorbs carbon and carries it as it flows into streams, rivers, and eventually the ocean.

But why, you might ask, does anybody besides a half-crazed moose-eating ecologist care about all of this? Believe it or not, that’s a question we think about quite a bit up here. In fact, it’s so important for people to understand this that Karen has been waking up early (around 5 am our time!) to talk to audiences in the United States (via satelite phone) about just this question. Yesterday Erin and I got to sit in on her presentation and it gave us a lot to think about. Karen told us a lot about thawing permafrost in Arctic ecosystems is causing major land upheavals and releasing carbon from ancient soils into rivers and, eventually, the ocean.

You see, understanding Arctic ecosystems isn’t just some obscure academic pursuit. It’s actually extremely important if we are going to learn how climate change is going to impact the rest of the world. I know if you’re sitting there in Pittsburgh PA it doesn’t seem very likely that carbon from an Arctic peatland is ever going to have an impact on your life. But the Earth is smaller than you might think. When carbon is released into aquatic ecosystems it is consumed by microbes which release carbon dioxide which, of course, feeds right back into the climate changes that are causing month-long rainstorms in the eastern United States. So what’s the big deal about a little extra rain? Climate change isn’t just about annoying weather. Too much rain causes crops to rot in the ground – as they have been on many farms this summer. And that decreases the quality and availability of produce while increasing prices in your local supermarket. And if you happen to be one of the farmers who can’t sell the rotten vegetables you’ve been working so hard all summer to grow, finances might be starting to look pretty dicey, too.

But if we can understand the changes taking place in arctic carbon cycling maybe we can predict the scale of the changes taking place and figure out how to do something about them. So, that’s a rather long-winded summary of what I’ve been thinking about recently. I hope it’s more interesting than it is intimidatingly long.

Peaty and satisfied,

Moira

Fortunately, it seems that again this year we have a group of optimists.  In addition to the unavoidable rigors of traveling vast distances and crossing 16-20 times zones to reach Cherskiy, there apparently has been a cold making it way through the group and abundance cold and wet weather to further put a chill on things.  Yet in spite of this, the group has rallied and students and PIs have initiated several fantastic research projects (which will be the subject of upcoming blog posts) in addition to setting up the remarkable new lab space.  The colds will pass, the weather will improve (well, hopefully – but if not, it will help everyone remember how remarkable it is to be where they are – the Siberian Arctic!), and the scientific projects that have been initiated with flourish.  Have some fun.  There are about 2 weeks left in what will undoubtedly be one of the biggest adventures you’ll ever have – live it fully!

Max Holmes

So, since we’ve arrived to Cherskiy almost a week passed. We knew a lot, got some experience of working in lab, taking water samples,  and killing blood suckers to not to let them do suckations(?). First night was awful, because we didn’t know that mosquitoes already were waiting us, so they were prepared for suckations. Perhaps, they’ve heard Zimovs’ talks about a defenite date of our arriving. But since that day it is becoming colder and colder, so this shmeelyveelyes dissapeared somewhere, but not  all of them.

  Concerning serious things, we all made great mental and musculin work, studying how to act in the field and in the lab, and we also learned a lot of arctic ecology and had lectures in the field. Andy showed us how to core trees and explained for what, also told a lot about permafrost in Grass Alas. As for me, first experience was a chemistry with Bill, we prepared reagents, which are important for proper devices’ work. Then with Sudeep we took water samples of Shuchi thermokarst lake, then we worked in the lab, distributing samples to accordingly marked little bottles for next lab procedures.  Then I did some hand exercises doing pumping the water samples of different depth also for next lab procedures. 

Today we (Nikita, Andy, Chris and me) installed barrels near the lakes shore and pumped water innere for Sudeep’s research. And now Chris came and it is time for a brake… Now it is 9:05 p.m. After Chris have taken a very interesting interview, we with Kayla went to take more water samples from Shochi for Bill, that time Max, Travis, Chris, Sudeep, Andy replaced our morning barrels in more suitable positions.

After a wonderful supper, we spoke about our research questions to make it clear to each other to cooperate probably.

What about a head of this “article” – some people are sick, some are getting sick, so let’s not be sick. let it be ligit.

Kirilko

During the preceding two days, we’ve hiked out and collected soil samples. To collect these samples, we need to form a profile by digging a grave-like hole until we hit the frozen permafrost below. We then measure the thawed active layer above the permafrost, observe its qualities, and collect soil samples from various depths.

Back at the lab, we’re analyzing the samples for moisture content and organic matter content using a drying oven and muffler furnace, respectively. Today we finished analyzing these results for our first permafrost profile! Tonight we’re going to commence our first water tests, where we’ll saturate the soil in water overnight to test what nutrients leech into the water from the soil. Hopefully we’ll have more results soon and be able to begin painting a picture as to how the terrestrial environment is affecting the lake’s environment.

On Friday Sudeep, Claire, and I took the first water samples of the trip. It was great to finally get a chance to start working after months of preparation and a week of actively discussing potential projects. We paddled out to a sample site in the middle of Shuchi Lake, a relatively small thermokarst lake within walking distance of the station, and profiled its physical properties and collected water and zooplankton samples. It was there that I experienced my “official” baptism into limnology (Yes, that means I stepped off the raft and sunk deep in the mud, filling my wading gear with water and becoming soaked). After dinner, we went back up to spend three and a half hours in the lab preparing the water samples for analysis.

Today we’re continuing our sampling and analysis.  Nickolay, Valentine, and I are looking at permafrost, and are about to go out on the field to collect a set of samples. Overall, everything is going well and it’s great to be here.

Until later -Joanne

Yesterday, Blaize, Max and Kayla sampled for macroinvertebrates at Shuchi or Pike Lake.  Max got an immediate boot full of water as soon as we got down to the lake and was a little bit grumpy the rest of the time.  The substrate is like quick sand, and we had to constantly wiggle ourselves free.  The sample consisted of extremely cloudy gray fine silt and it took hours to look through a fraction of one out of our three samples.  Being in the lab until one in the morning, we learned our first field lesson.  Our sample sizes were too big to thoroughly sift through for the tiny creatures we were searching for.  We did find many species of annelid, snails, and fly larva.  With a smaller sampling method, Kayla and Max will be sampling a variety of lakes and streams and comparing the marcoinvertebrate diversity to the surrounding vegetation, geography and information from other projects such as dissolved oxygen, dissolved carbon, etc.

Although Blaize found the search for macroinvertebrates to be very interesting, she wishes also to pursue a project looking at the formation and patterns of Thermokarst lakes, which are lakes that have been formed due to permafrost thaw. Right now she is in the process of forming a hypothesis.

It’s not science all the time though.  Living in the barge is always an adventure.  We have been able to try out Blaize’s fishing pole with no return, shower in mother nature’s milk (a tributary to the Kolyma River) and work on our Russian skills by chatting, eating Russian cuisine and listening to live Russian music.

Kayla & Blaize

Today was a good day. A day of feasting, you might say. A day of surprises for sure. After many fiber-free days the Gods have smiled upon us and sent an unexpected gift: apples and oranges. They must have heard Erin’s offer of $10 for an apple and mercifully granted her one for free! They even heard her desperate pleas for jelly and provided a jar of strawberry jam at dinner. Joyful cries of “Ration the Jelly!” were hear throughout the barge. And there was much rejoicing.

Just when we thought nothing could improve this day, the dead duck arrived. It was a little sad to see this beautiful Teal lying lifeless in Andy Bunn’s hands… until we imagined sinking our teeth into its rich steaming flesh. Apparently the gift of two packs of American cigarettes to a boatful of Russian army men was responsible for this unexpected largess – which also included the gift of a fish. We will eat well for at least…well, with Brian around, about 50 seconds.

A final moment of beauty came in the form of two bars of chocolate supplied by the sublime Bill Sobczak. Could life get any better?

Today we would like to reflect upon the importance of the small joys that make our lives beautiful. To those of you reading this in the ‘States, please take a moment to savor your jelly, or honey, or delicious fresh fruit.

You may worry that this entry is influenced by our long hours spent mixing chemicals in the lab (seriously, all day – but don’t worry, they finally let us out). But with this fortification we are prepared for whatever escapades tomorrow brings (we have high hopes they will involve field work).

Still sniffing orange peels,

Erin & Moira

PS Don’t worry we really do have delicious food here, we just get excited about special treats. And might have inhaled too many fumes…

Now they are improving both lab and living facilities, opening up space for new equipment as funding becomes available. What this means for future productivity is uncertain, but will make the station even more attractive to scientists around the world. I feel like we are making history here, as the first scientific group to use this facility. And I am the first blogger. Quite an honor. The result of all of this could be a scary high level of scientific productivity right where we need it and at just the right time. We are excited to contribute to this scientific work, and feel privileged to be here.

For the PI’s, we saw the inside of this building last year before the work was done. We can see clearly what an amazing accomplishment this structure represents. Walking into this building last year felt a bit hazardous (although it was perfectly safe), and it was a mess. I think we saw the potential, but didn’t imagine the level of improvement that we saw when we moved our equipment in yesterday.

The facility has outstanding living quarters (currently set up for a half dozen folks with room for a dozen more), a large common area, rooms for computer work, and two rooms currently built with benches for lab work.

 I think Sergei Zimov and son Nikita are justifiably proud of their accomplishment. So now, we have moved into our own lab space, 5 of us are now sleeping in the new beds, and we are enjoying our life in Siberia.

Finally, we’ve updated some of the recent blog posts with additional pictures. Here and here.

Max's leg

Once upon a time in Cherskii, Siberia, a group of ambitious ecology students attempted to better understand the remote and beautiful landscape they had the privilege to visit. Little did they know, there was a predator here long before they arrived. A predator more formidable than a grizzly and more bloodthirsty than a vampire.

The mosquitoes here are out of this world. In the mere seconds after we got of the airplane, they were upon us in hordes. These buzzers are huge.  Small aircraft in fact. It is rare that you can leave the sanctuary of indoors without the proper protection. Luckily, they are the dumbest insects under the ever-present arctic sun. If someone couldn’t see what we were incessantly slapping, they would take us for a group of motor-impaired delusional spazzes. Our Russian hosts, unbelievably, have made some sort of pact with these winged demons. While we stand around convulsing (in full bug net body armor, mind you), they continue their business without notice, unscathed.

While many of us came seemingly prepared with bug shirts, head nets, gloves, Deet, and all-natural remedies, the mosquitoes of NE Siberia have had their way with many of us.  Our first night on the barge, many of us learned the hard way of the necessity of having a pre-bedtime “mosquito safari” in the bunk rooms.  Last night, the kill count in our room was 16 (15 of which fell by way of the iron fist of Chris Linder, onboard photographer).  Yesterday, on the summit of the local peak Rodenka, a sneak attack by winged insects (mosquitoes and horse flies alike) left us nursing our itchy, inflamed wounds to this very moment.

We are still working out tactical strategy for dealing with these obnoxious little bloodsuckers, but keeping the doors shut on the barge seems to be a good place to start.  That, and bathing in Deet and herbal ointments before stepping foot anywhere outside.         

Here’s to ointments and other shmeelyveely,

Max and Travis

Barge bedroom

First, a description of my room:  I’m accustomed to living in a room, usually occupied by me or me and one other, in the case of my dorm room.  Here however, I share a comfortable bunkroom with three others: Bill, Chris, and Max.  Bill saws logs, Chris kills mosquitos at bedtime, and Max reminds me when I have to rise the following morning.  Though we have no overabundance of space, I would have it no other way—the bedroom, like the barge, is small but nevertheless provides for all our needs.  Even more, the barge shapes our activities, structures our habits.  I’ll find myself chatting with max across the narrow inter-bunk divide about politics, writing journals across the kitchen table with a professor, or brushing my teeth five others—to my surprise, even oral hygiene has somehow become a social activity.  All in all, the barge—whether because of the rich stories to which it is essential or its quaint but prominent presence here—has taken on a personality of its own.  I can see the barge like the quintessential home in so many children’s book illustrations: With us, the barge dons an eye-cover, nestles down, and falls asleep with us at bedtime.

Today we spent most of the day off the barge.  Early in the day, we students followed Andy into the larch forest to an alas, in quotidian terms, an old lake basin that has since drained.  There we learned how to core trees. 

Brian Kantor coring at Grass Alas

For me this was exciting because until now, most of my ecological learning concerned aquatic systems where fieldwork generally included water samples and water probes.  Today, however, I enjoyed the immediacy of our work—all I had to do was drill an honest and simple tool into tree to unlock the secrets of our investigation.  A tree core, as I learned, tells us more than just the age of a tree.  With the age of a tree we can begin to piece together the clues that a terrestrial systems holds, even to understand how trees respond to rising greenhouse gas levels.

Andy Bunn with a tree core and straw behind his ear

Well, here on the barge it’s quieting down.  Though the sunlight illuminating my activity implies otherwise, it’s nearing bedtime.  Thus, I wish y’all good night.  I’ll be writing soon—I’ve got an exceptionally exciting project underway and I’m eager to write about it.  Perhaps a taste of environmental anthropology is afoot…?

Brian

We have wrapped up our second day at the Northeast Science Station – setting up the labs, calibrating instruments, finding some equipment stored from last year, and so on. We have some scratchy throats in the group but in general all are well.

All aboard

After 5 days of traveling we’ve finally reached our home. We took a small propeller plane to Cherskiy, which was a new sort of traveling experience for us – we piled our luggage in the front and secured it with nets. We flew low enough that we could watch the landscape change from marshy wetlands in Lena floodplain to hilly, dry tundra. We flew over several mountain ranges and had our first view of thermokarst lakes and polygonal ground. As we came into Cherskiy, our landing wheels came down and looked like they would brush the surface of the Kolyma, but we safely made the gravel runway and landed at the creatively painted Cherskiy airport. We were met by the Zimovs and Davydovs and conveyed by bus to the Northeast Science Station. There we had our first glimpse of our home for the next 3 weeks. Though a barge may sound like an odd place to live, we already love it. The cozy dining room (complete with maps on the wall) is perfect for planning our future research.

One of the barge bedrooms

After settling in, the faculty sent us out for our first taste of Siberian mosquitoes, or rather their first taste of us. Have no fear, we were well received. The welcoming committee was large enough to chase us back to the barge to pick-up nets shirts and repellent. But our dismay was not enough to dampen our enthusiasm for the beauty of the Siberian landscape. It’s truly amazing – you wouldn’t expect such lush green scenery, and the wildflowers are especially beautiful. A few of us encountered the wreckage of a crashed plane (don’t worry – not ours) while some others explored the station and larch forest.

Big, slow skeeters

We returned to the barge before dinner to begin our meetings with the faculty. In groups of two we “speed dated” with each professor and discussed research interests and project goals for this summer. We can honestly say we have a lot to think about, but that only makes us more excited for what is to come. We finished off our evening with a delicious dinner, made even sweeter by the fact that it was the professors’ night on dish duty!

All in all, we can already tell that we love our new home. We may never come back.

Erin, Blaize, and Moira!

Touchdown

We’ve finally made it to the Northeast Science Station in Cherskiy. It’s 12:30 in the morning and the sun is still up. The landscape here is more amazing than I could have imagined. During the plane ride, I was able to look out my window onto a landscape unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. Rivers and streams meander aimlessly amongst seemingly randomly placed lakes. All the hydrological features, both above and below ground, are marked by grass contrasting against the forest.

Lakes upon lakes

I’ve found that the Polaris Project provides the opportunity to observe phenomena that is difficult to accurately conceptualize without seeing it in person. Over the past two days, I have been able to see things in person that I had previously only read about.

Unloading at the station

Yesterday in Yakutsk, we had the opportunity to visit the Permafrost Institute and enter its permafrost tunnel. When I had read about permafrost, I mentally pictured it as a frozen muddy concoction speckled with rocky clasts and organic matter. Much to my surprise, the permafrost appeared like sandstone rock which, when melted under my fingertips, crumbled into sand. Within the layers of frozen sand were stripes of 10,000 year old grass roots and frozen vegetation. It’s immensely exciting to be able to touch these sediments which were deposited thousands of years ago.

Until later –Joanne

Until our next internet connection,

Kayla and Erin P.S. We are hoping to see the infamous X-Governor Sarah Palin’s house from the barge. You can right?

Hello Moose (donuts?)!

And we’re off to Cherskii. So far we’ve been exposed to quite a variety of food. Yesterday, in downtown Yakutsk, we solicited a delicious cafeteria that gave us a chance to try liver with mayo, spiced carrots with mushrooms, fried bread-pocketed meatballs, flaccid french-fries, chicken kabobs, raw salmon, and of course, meat donuts. This meal was the follow up to our breakfast of butter-porridge and hotdogs. Our inability to successfully articulate what exactly we want to eat has resulted in some frustrating but humorous exchanges. At breakfast, we were all systematically offered “chai” or “coffee,” only to discover that there was no chai (tea) after all.

“Nyet chai!”

Expectations are high after all we’ve heard about the local cuisine we’ll be eating on the barge in Cherskii.  Our diets should be fortified with reindeer, fish (if we can catch it) including char and sturgeon, and various forms of moose (stew, stake, etc.).  As they say, there is no nobler meat than the majestic moose.  As Sergei Zimov says, vegetarians “will lose weight”.  Unless they are satisfied with eating only potatoes and dill.  The occasional cabbage salad will be a treat.

Here’s to dill, heaps and heaps of dill.

Travis and Max

Do it yourself baggage check

The funny part about traveling as large group is that we are one dominating force in the airport. Overall things are going quite smoothly and we made it through the double security points (one for the small airport and one before check in), have checked in for our flight and are all excited to go to the NE Science Station in Cherskiy. It is time to go and check out this amazing landscape as we fly North. The landscape will be filled with lakes and riversin a relatively flat area. Coming from the West it is always an eye opener to see so many lakes in such a flat landscape. One of the things the students have been talking about is how much we are shaped by topography in the West compare to this part of Siberia. Looking forward to the trip! I hope all of you are well back home.

The interviewers questions were interesting and I think suggestive of something important. In all the interviews, the main interest was in how Americans were responding emotionally to the art and whether these types of art exhibits can actually impact people’s behavior. I believe that it can and in fact sometimes think that art can carry us farther towards action because of the emotional response we have. Gut level responses often are more motivating than the cerebral responses scientific information elicits. That being said, we need to continue to use the tools of scientific inquiry to assess ecosystem responses to environmental changes.

I took pleasure in the opportunity to share with the interviewer the strong impression this art has had on Americans all across the nation. I especially recall sharing with my students the power of this art and the reverence they felt towards this material when a similar exhibit came to St. Olaf College. There is something very important about the symbolic connection and common experience of our mutual response, Yakutians and Americans, to these beautiful works of art and I am happy we were able to participate in this event.

Greetings from Yakutsk! We arrived here around 5:00 AM local time and are staying in a hotel next to the airport. During the past two days, those of us from the West Coast have flown on four planes across seventeen time zones. All the travel and time changes have left us feeling a bit jetlagged, but at the same time we’re all excited about getting closer to Cherskiy.

Even though we’re not as far north as our final destination, it’s light nearly all the time. During the plane ride to here, we were able to witness a beautiful sunrise and sunset. It was surprising how early the sunrise was- 3:00 AM. Once we get to Cherskiy, the sun won’t set at all until later in July.

Below is a photo of Joanne Heslop  (University of Nevada undergraduate majoring in Ecohydrology and Environmental Studies) and I at the airport.  The Moscow airport has modernized in the last year and it very new looking.  Check out the cartoon artwork behind us.

We are off for another changes into 6 times zones.  Hopefully we can write more form Yakutsk before we leave for the Arctic.

Hope all are well.

Sudeep

1.  Everyone made it to Chicago in time to get on the flight to Moscow together (whew)

2.  Passport control and custom clearance in Moscow went smoothly (whew #2)

3.  Valentin Spektor (Russian scientist who is part of the Polaris Project, from the Melnikov Permafrost Institute in Yakutsk) was at the airport in Moscow to meet the group, as was the bus that we had chartered to take the group to the hotel (whew #3)

4.  Everyone made it safely to the hotel and turned-in several hours ago.

And now, hopefully sleep for all team members in Moscow.  I have the same hope for myself as I ponder the prospects for the night with our now 9 day old daughter Sophie Jane…

Max Holmes

After a gripping round of icebreakers, the students–and professors– from St Olaf, Carleton, UNR, and Western Washington are anxiously awaiting their departure.  Bitting our nails, missing our parental figures, and frantically trying to complete required readings, we are ready to get on the plane! We hope to see the Clarkies soon and can’t wait to get started!

See everyone in Chicago!

AGU is one of the world’s largest scientific societies, and all 50,000+ members receive EOS each week.  Membership to AGU is also one of the best deals going:  regular membership costs just $20 per year and student memberships are only $7 per year!  For membership details, click here.

AGU’s annual meeting is in San Francisco each December, and last year more than 12 U.S. and Russian Polaris Project faculty and students participated (out of ~15,000 total participants!).  We expect that the Polaris Project will have a similar showing this year, and again we will emphasize student-led presentations at this international scientific conference.

Sophie Jane Holmes on her birthday (24 June 2009)- she is 8 days old today!

The project runs collaboratively and decisions in general are made collaboratively.  In my absence, John Schade will assume final responsibility for the group during travel to and from Cherskiy and will make decisions jointly with Sergey Zimov once in Cherskiy. You are in very good hands – my only concern is whether I’ll get my job back next year!

Andy Bunn and Chris Linder have done a tremendous job revamping and updating the Polaris Project website, including integration with Facebook and Twitter.  We were very pleased with the large number of people that followed the expedition via the website last year and have high hopes that even more will do so this year.  Please participate – follow the blog and photo gallery, ask questions and make comments, and try to get a glimpse of the experience that the Polaris Project students and faculty are having undertaking a scientific endeavor in the Siberian Arctic.

To the Polaris Project Students and Faculty:

Onward!  Be safe, have fun, learn as much as possible – scientifically, socially, and culturally.  There will be times when you are incredible tired, uncomfortable, and questioning “what the—- am I doing”, but you are embarking on a remarkable experience that will likely change your outlook on many things.  Revel in the experience.

All the best!

Max Holmes

okay, now that you know just who i am, and what i’m like, i can commence my official blog:

So I, like many of you or your close relations, am preparing to go to siberia.  Currently I’m in California with my fellow St. Olaf student representative, Erin Seybold.  We’ve already left our homes in Minnesota, and, with our captain of operations John Schade,  have spent the last two weeks in northern california experimenting a bit with local streams.  More specifically, we’ve been studying nutrient spiraling in three local streams, to which we will compare previous stream experiments back at home in northfield, and upcoming experiments in Siberia.

Resource limitation is a concept widely understood throughout ecology.  In our work, however, we’re focusing on nutrient spiraling, a concept essential to understanding stream nutrient limitation.  Where some streams (like those we studied in northfield) are phosphorus limited, others, such those here in the reserve, are nitrogen limited.  Nutrients flowing through a stream are assimilated and mineralized again and again, conceptually spiralling in and out of the stream biota, or organic form.  Furthermore, limiting nutrients generally spiral quicker.  that is, limiting nutrients are taken up faster than nonlimiting nutrients.  What does that mean?  Why does it matter?  By investigating how fast nitrogen and phosphorus are taken up in a stream–how fast they cycle in and out of the biota–we can garner a better understanding of local influences and ecological processes.  For example, with nutrient spiraling research, we can begin to ask important questions as to how soil type, light abundance, and anthropogenic influences, among others, shape ecological processes.

Our upcoming work in Siberia will utilize this knowledge to investigate nutrient limitation in arctic streams.  As climate change thaws permafrost and releases many otherwise frozen sources of nutrients, stream dynamics will undoubtedly change, ushering forth nascent influences to climate change.  Understanding this, of course, is our goal.

Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed my blog.  I’ll be back, no doubt.

–Brian

I’m actually very interested in this question and it touches on a great deal of the science we study in the Arctic. Most importantly, the question of whether the dramatic melt of 2007 and 2008 is the result of a forcing or a feedback is critical. It’s well known that the models of sea ice melt are more conservative than the actual melt. So, if the greater than expected melt is the result of a forcing it means that the forcings are wrong (not accounting for say, black carbon on the surface). If the melt is a result of a feedback (say, bottom-up ablation) then we need to be on the look out for a greater than expected and sooner than expected invocation of the ice-albedo feedback. Either way, the models are wrong (The great statistician George Box famously wrote that ‘…all models are wrong, but some are useful.’). Work by Julienne Stroeve and others have documented this well. E.g., here. I think Mark Serreze made a good case that 2007 melt record was in large part due to really good weather conditions for melting ice. in fact he has a very nice article on sea ice changes both in Nature from last year and an article in a newsletter from ARCUS called: Arctic Climate Change: Where Reality Exceeds Expectations. Look here. I especially like the Serreze is an inherently skeptical scientist.

But I digress….Putting these bets together is a good excuse to be thinking about this issue. Here are the bets for this year:

And a zoom to see the detail:

Max continues his doomsday ways from last year but several of us are predicting new record lows.  I continued my stat geekery but using a loess filter this year to make my guess. There is a lot of data out there to help making the forecast. I think the introduction of a possible El Nino this year and the warm water in the Bering Sea (here to compare 2008) are favorable to big melt but I’m sticking with a melt close to the 2007 level. You can click here to get the latest measurements from NSIDC or a report from ARCUS here.

Regardless of all our pontificating, the game is afoot!

-Andy Bunn

I am a science/nature photographer and researcher. I work part-time for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the Department of Physical Oceanography and the rest of the time as a freelance photographer. Since 2002 I have worked mainly in the Arctic and Antarctic documenting science expeditions. My goal is to explain science to the general public using photographs–and just as importantly, to let them know what fun science can be! Learn more about what I do on my website.

On this trip I will be collecting not only still photographs, but also video and audio (both b-roll of the environment and interviews). On the barge, I will be working with Andy to craft “Science stories,” slideshows that explain the “how” of the science that goes on in Cherskiy. Once I get back, I will take those thousands and photos and hours of audio and video and make a single 10-minute multimedia show, much like this one.

Back to packing!  -Chris

Blaize was extremely excited for the trip, but after her visit to Woods Hole and going over the trip in more detail she wishes she could leave that day! Since the visit to Woods Hole she has been preparing for the trip by reading some interesting articles about research already being done in the arctic and getting necessary gear for the trip.

Claire is both very, very excited for the trip to Russia and just a little bit nervous. She’s never been out of the country before, so this is quite a big trip to be her first foray abroad. In prep for the research we’ll be doing in Siberia, she’s been looking at some satellite imagery of the Cherskiy Region and Kolyma River basin. She can’t wait to see what’s happening on the ground, not just from the remote sensing!

Boyd, like the other Clarkies, is excited to finally get there. He’s excited to reconnect with the PIs and the Zimov’s and continue his research of alas basins in the Kolyma region. He’s been working on a different approach to assess lake drainage rates and is anxious to be back in the field to utilize this new approach. He’s also excited to meet the other students!!

We wish all the other students/professors well in their preparation for the trip and safe travels next week. See you in Chicago on the 2nd!

The Clarkies

(The map is a schematic – the pilots are aware the Earth is round – orthodromic distance and all that.)

Bellingham to Seattle: 93 mi, 39min
Seattle to Chicago: 1723 mi, 3hr 59mn
Chicago to Moscow: 4983 mi, 10hr 10mn
Moscow to Novosibirsk: ~1700 mi, ~4hr
Novosibirsk to Yakutsk: ~1700 mi, ~4hr
Yakutsk to Cherskiy: ~1000 mi, ~3hr

That means we’ll fly about 11,200 miles (1.8E4km)  and be in the air for about 26 hours. Fortunately, we break it up over about four days of travel.

Why do we fly so far? The simple answer is that we are adhering to Title 49 of the United States Code, Subtitle VII, Part A, subpart I, Chapter 401, 40118. This is better known at the Fly America Act. Look here. The only way to fly to Russia on a US flag carrier is through Moscow – the only problem with that is that Moscow is a staggering 8 time zones from Cherskiy. We could likely convince somebody at NSF that this arrangement is a bad idea and we should fly another way – but alas there aren’t a lot of other good ways to do this (Flying from Seattle to Seoul to Vladivostok to Yakutsk to Cherskiy is one – but in the end you don’t save much time). There used to be an Alaska Airlines flight to Provideniya but it’s been defunct for years – alas. There is a chance that in future years the Polaris Project might be able to fly via Provideniya on a charter. Look here.

In the meantime, we’ll enjoy the look on people’s faces when we explain the 19 time zones and 11 thousands miles we travel – one way.

http://twitter.com/PolarisTweet

2007 data with 2008 preds

Here’s what 2008 really looked like:

2008 data with 2008 preds

Holly  won the pool and got the glory and acclaim that came with it (that was the only prize).

The guesses last year were interesting. We used different methods for trying to predict the minimum. Max and Karen really thought the bottom had fallen out and we had reached a tipping point. They still might be right. The 2008 “recovery” was tiny and extent is not the same as volume. 2008 was likely the lowest volume on the record. See here. I tried to predict the 2008 extent using a statistical trick (a cubic smoothing  spline). Holly and John came closest and had no good defense of their guesses but got it right. Go figure.

Now comes round two. What’s going to happen in 2009? This figure shows the current state of Arctic sea ice:

You can click here to see this in close to real time from the NSIDC.

We are going to continue the pool and see who can take home the glory this year. Will Max and Karen revise their doomsday approach to sea ice? I, for one, am going to spend some more time thinking about what the ocean temps are doing this year. E.g., here are the current global sea surface temperature anomalies. Compare that to the same period in 2008. Will these have some predictive power? Will the breakup of the 2008 La Nina impact the sea ice extent?  Or, was the huge 2007 melt really a result of unusual weather (note weather is not climate) conditions over the 2007 summer in the Arctic for melting ice? E.g., give a good read here to learn some more about the unusual atmospheric pressure pattern over the Arctic in 2007.

I think we’ll have more on this soon.

Giving these presentations was very fulfilling for a couple of reasons.  First, it showed the students the opportunities that science can offer them.  I certainly never believed that I would spend a month 19 time zones away in northeastern Siberia when I sat in the same chemistry class five years ago.  Second, I feel that my presentations left these students with a greater awareness of the changes occurring in the Arctic and the uncertainty regarding the ramifications of these changes.   Hence, I believe the students gained a better understanding of the importance of science and a renewed interest in pursuing science as a career.

I also enjoyed giving these presentations since the school in Wilbur is very small, with Kindergarten through 12th grade all under one roof.   As a result, all of the teachers and many of the students know me, which further opened up discussion about the Polaris Project and science.

Tyler Llewellyn, Western Washington University ’09

Arctic Science planning activities are one important step towards communicating to funding agencies the priority areas of scientific research, which in turn may result in future funding opportunities for researchers in these specific research trajectories.  But one of the most rewarding experiences about being here is to connect with other arctic researchers from around the world, cross-fertilize our scientific ideas and results, and foster future collaborations.  ASSW 2010 will be in Nuuk, Greenland and ASSW 2011 will likely be in Seoul, Korea.  Oftentimes there are possibilities for young researchers to attend these types of conferences and summits, so I encourage you all to keep an eye out for further opportunities!

So with that, as they say here in Norway — Skål!

Karen

However, the forum has put our project in a setting that is truly awesome. Hearing a scientist like Richard Alley talk is great but the kind of thing we’ve all done as scientists. The forum has exposed us to people and ideas that we don’t run across as often. We’ve gotten a chance to spend time with John Francis – the Planet Walker who gave a moving and funny plenary address about his 22 years of living without motorized transport and the 17 years of those he spent living silently. Look at his TED lecture here. We attended a interfaith service centered on faith and environment featuring sublime chorale music. We heard from Amy Klobuchar, Minnesota’s funny and savvy senator. We heard Majora Carter address green collar jobs and inner cities.

The forum has been a place for us to discuss our science and eduction. It’s been a place for us plan for the future. It’s also been a moving and eye-opening experience for us a pointy-headed scientists. I think we all feel humbled to be part of a large group of people so concerned with peace, civility, and understanding our role on the planet.

While here we’ll have a chance to get together with the new Polaris students from St. Olaf and Carleton as well.  We’ll be having a meeting to talk about science and arrangements for the summer course before heading off to hear Richard Alley kick off the forum. Updates to come…

Travis Drake and Moira Hough:  Carleton College

Blaize Denfeld and Claire Griffin: Clark University

Brian Kantor and Erin Seybold: St. Olaf College

Joanne Heslop: University of Nevada Reno

Kayla Henson and Max Janicek:  Western Washington University

Olga Belina and Kirill Tretyakov:  Yakut State University

We would also like to welcome Boyd Zapatka (from Clark University) as this year’s returning student.  Boyd will expand on the research he began last year and serve as a course assistant.

In addition to the students above who will take part in 2009 Siberian field course / research experience, many more are enrolled in the associated on-campus courses.

Welcome aboard everyone!

Max

In addition, NOVA will also be airing a special entitled “Extreme Ice” on March 24 (check your local PBS listings).  I encourage you all to watch!  Looks like some fantastic, action-packed cinematography of glacier and ice sheet dynamics.

Karen

It was exciting to have a final product for all of the work we have been doing this past semester in relation to the project.  The AGU conference as a whole has been a great experience.  There is an overwhelming amount of scientific knowledge all in one place, which is very exciting.  It has been inspiring to speak with the scientists present about their cutting-edge research.  The research they are doing encompasses many different fields, which all have great implications to what is happening now in terms of global climate change.  This week has gone by so fast, we cannot believe that it is coming to an end.

Katie Abbott, student, St. Olaf

Kate Willis, non-student, Clark University

It was a great experience and we received a lot of support, interest, questions, and feedback about our poster and research throughout the morning from several faculty and scientists from across the country.  It was great hearing what they had to say in terms of furthering our research and modifying our approach and also to hear about their research experiences.

This has been a great opportunity for networking, learning about other contemporary research topics, and seeing how scientific knowledge is shared among the general public.  We look forward to continuing research and staying connected with the people we met at this conference and are grateful to have had this experience in San Francisco.

-Tyler Llewellyn, Western Washington University ’09

-Boyd Zapatka, Clark University ’10

The highlights for us will be presentations of student research from the Polaris Project. Kate Willis and Katie Abbott will be presenting some of the results from their work looking at the biogeochemical characteristics of the Kolyma River with regards to permafrost degradation. Tyler and Boyd will be presenting some of their results quantifying the rates of lake drainage around the Kolyma and speculating on the implications for methane fluxes to the atmosphere. They will be part of the small handful of undergraduates that present at a prestigious scientific meeting.

The PI team will be meeting to discuss next year’s field class and our scientific objectives. We will also be plotting major updates for the website including providing access to the data we collected last year and our plans for the future of the Polaris Project. We’ve rolled out the new photo gallery and will be incorporating some of the videos we took last year as well. We will have a new application procedure up soon as well.

Stay tuned!

Now that school has started and I’ve gotten into the groove of things, I’ve started looking back and thinking about what I can do for outreach.  Here’s a few things I’m working on:

1) Clark is affiliated with a local high school, with many recent graduate students working as part-time teachers, substitutes, or to help with administrative work.  I’m in contact with a few people working there and am hoping to visit a few classrooms and discuss my experience, how science ‘works’ and the importance of climate change research.

2) At home in Bangkok, I’ve been in contact with a few teachers and will be speaking to the high school students about similar topics.

3) On campus here, I’m hoping to get together with Kate Willis and Matt Ruppel at some point this semester and hold a talk/discussion at Clark and Holy Cross to inform our peers of the unique research opportunity we took part in.

Hope all is well with everyone and I look forward to seeing you all soon!

-Boyd Zapatka, Student, Clark University ’10

Max and I are going to work on hiring a skilled web programmer to help us get some new content, better photo sharing, and such in the next few months. Until then, we’ll make occasional updates to the blog (like on our sea ice predictions) and get some new photos up. Some of the students are also threatening to bring the project to Facebook. Thanks to all who have been following along.

We’re all currently sitting in an cafe in Moscow, reflecting on the past 3+ weeks of the Polaris Project and getting excited about the fact that we’re heading home tomorrow. Several of us were talking yesterday evening about how difficult it will be to summarize the experience to our families and friends when we get home. It has been such a magnificent and varied experience that we couldn’t even imagine where we’d start. It will take time, but I think we’re all looking forward to conveying as much about the experience to as many people as we possibly can.

Thanks to all who have been following our trip as presented here. If you are a parent of one of the Polaris Project students, you should be very proud. They were all wonderful – intelligent, hard working, and fun.
Cheers from Russia,
Max Holmes
Project Leader, Woods Hole Research Center

Upon return from a truly spectacular trip up North to the tundra, we’re back in Cherksiy and have spent the last few days in the labs analyzing and sifting through the countless water samples, tree rings, soil layers, organic matter, and gases collected since our expedition here began. It has been quite the learning experience and the PI’s have been very helpful in teaching us how to use the different lab instruments, how they function and what results to expect.

Both the lake and the streams research groups use instruments called the SUVA and the YSI.  The YSI is used when samples are taken and records temperature, pH, dissolved organic carbon, percent oxygen saturation, and pressure to identify the basic qualities of the sample site.  This information is important when anaylzing the physical characterisitics of different watersheds and why these values differ between them.  The SUVA is a thermospectronic UV scanner that injects different wavelengths of light into water samples (ranging from 190-1100 nanometers of light).  The amount of light absorbed by the water samples at different wavelengths (visible and UV) indicates the concentration of dissolved organic carbon in the water and the overall structural characteristics of the water itself.  The stream group (Katie Abbott and Kate Villis) has been analyzing 2 samples from their various locations, one is unfiltered and the other filtered, to indicate the spectral qualities of the water. Having sampled various tributaries of different sizes both upstream and downstream of Cherskiy along the Kolyma River, they hope to make inferences about the inputs from different watersheds and how they affect the carbon content of the river.

The lake group (Anya Suslova and Matt) has also been using the SUVA to examine the spectral qualities of different lakes around Cherskiy. Similar to the stream group, the also use the YSI probe. Right now, these two young researchers have been filtering lake water and are performing an experiment in a man-made lake within the station.  They placed 2 bottles of lake water injected with Pleistocene yedoma into this lake and every 2 hours, they record temperature and light intensity to examine how DIC (dissolved inorganic carbon) and CO2 change over time based on microbial activity. So far, there are results but they are largely non-conclusive. Hopefully by tomorrow they will have reached some sort of inference.

The tree group (Tyler and I) has been using a hand lens to record the age of the different tree cores from the various sample sites.  Tyler has aged all of the tree cores and I plan on going through them some time before we leave to compare my measurements with his.  It is quite the tedious process but must be done. Adding in Tyler’s soil data, we hope to reach a conclusion on alas composition and structure both above and below the surface and will add in a spatial component to reach conclusions on the role of the alas in watersheds and the Arctic region as a whole.

Another young researcher, Anya Falina, has been sifting through ancient yedoma soil looking for solid organic material and analyzing the composition of the soil.  She has also been reading literature about permafrost in the region with hopes of reaching a conclusion on the contents of this ancient soil.

During the last few minutes of being in Duvannyi Yar, Sergei Zimov and Katey Walter allowed me to take part in a new project that aims at examining the amount and quality of POC (particulate organic carbon) transported by the Kolyma River. I took 3 different samples from 3 different days and have been using a LiCor to analyze the amount of CO2 contained within my different samples at different times. If CO2 levels are increasing, decomposition is occurring and this organic material is actively releasing CO2 into the river. This has significant implications both on an ecosystem level and the role of rivers in transporting organic material.

-Boyd Zapatka, Student, Clark University

Yesterday afternoon, the students and PIs were given the options to either embark on an adventure up north by boat for a few days, or to work on data in Cherskiy.  The majority of us chose to travel north with hopes of seeing arctic tundra, reindeer herding camps, and possibly the Arctic Ocean!  So, last night after enduring a bouncy, wet voyage on a classic Russian-style boat, we anchored on the shore of the tundra.

This morning, a few of us (Anya Suslova, Katie Abbott, Karen, Max, Kate Bulygina and I) woke up bright and early to sample a stream nearby.  It looked completely different form than any of the streams we had seen in Cherskiy.  It had almost a beaded form; there were a series of little ‘lakes’ connected by a small stream that led to the Kolyma river.  After sampling, we also saw a reindeer herding camp along the shore of the Kolyma.  There was a group of small shacks filled with fishing nets, animal hides, beds, and small kitchens (one with ketchup still on the table!).  It looked as though the group had just up and left.  Sergei later informed us that they had followed the herd north for the summer and would probably return in the fall for a couple of weeks.

After breakfast we traveled a bit further north to our hiking and sampling destination.  Once we stepped off the boat everyone was in awe.   We were standing in front of a massive wall of shale, which Sergei stated was from the Mesozoic Period.  We could pick pieces off of the wall or the ground and we were holding millions of years old rock in our hands!  The group hiked further along the shore and up a hill.  The view was surreal.  We could see the Arctic Ocean in the distance in front of us, the Kolyma River to our left, mountains to our right, and in between was a huge expanse of tundra with a river running through.  The tundra was much more green than I had expected.  There were tons of grasses and woody shrubs, and it was windy, cold and beautiful!  We spent the afternoon hiking across the tundra and up along the stream.  The streams group took samples for a longitudinal study of the stream while the rest of the group explored and fished.  It will be interesting to analyze the differences in dissolved oxygen, light absorbance, nutrient levels, etc. along different parts of the stream.

In the mid-afternoon we hiked back to the boat for our journey home.  By midnight we had arrived back to what has come to feel like our comfortable ‘home sweet home’:  The Barge.

Kate Willis, Student Clark University

Today we went on an excursion to Pleistocene Park, Sergei Zimov’s largest experiment.  The park consists of roughly 40,000 acres of forest, shrubland, lakes, streams, and if Sergei has his way, grasslands.  At the park there is a cabin that houses two people that work at the park, various outbuildings to store equipment, and a personnel carrier that plays an integral role in Sergei’s ultimate vision.

Sergei Zimov started Pleistocene Park in 1989 with the hopes of restoring the more productive grassland ecosystem, which he calls mammoth tundra-steppe, that was present more than 10,000 years ago during the Pleistocene Epoch.  The grasslands present during the Pleistocene were perpetuated by the grazing of large herbivores, including but not limited to, mammoths, horses, moose, reindeer, bison, and musk oxen.  The grazing and trampling associated with these megafauna both increases nutrient cycling as well as decreases survivability of mosses, large shrubs, and trees, resulting in grasses having a competitive advantage.  However, when many of these megafauna became extinct early in the Holocene, these vast grasslands became less productive forests.

In an attempt to restore the park, which naturally lacks the necessary megafauna, to a Pleistocene grassland, Sergei Zimov has carried out controlled burns to enhance nutrient cycling and clear trees.  Due to the current shortage of mammoths, Sergei also periodically takes matters into his own hands.  He drives his Solviet personel carrier, which he describes as the equivalent to two male mammoths, through the forest.  His only complaint about this substitution is that it does not produce any excrement, an essential component.  So far he has released Yakutian horses and moose into the park to increase decomposition and trample moss, and is currently in the market for musk oxen and bison.  After herbivore populations reach high enough levels, he plans to reintroduce various predators, including wolves and Siberian tigers.  Sergei is anxiously awaiting the day that he becomes a tiger farmer. 

We previously thought that the forest was natural, consisting of trees and birds, and that we should preserve it.  However, after hearing Sergei Zimov’s vision, we realized that it was only a result of humans.  Thus, it makes sense to nudge nature back to its natural state where, with the help of herbivores, it will become stable once again.  As we saw horses run through the park, we could envision the numerous, even larger, megafauna that will call Pleistocene Park home in the future.  While much of the park is currently unappealing due to ash from fires and toppled trees from ”mammoths”, some parts are beautiful, made up of various grasses and short willow shrubs that provide quality forage for herbivores.  Humans usually convert natural systems to artificial ones.  However, at Pleistocene Park, Sergei Zimov is helping nature restore itself from unnatural forests (in which he claims the trees are growing illegally) to the productive, awe-inspiring mammoth tundra-steppe it once was.

 To read more about Pleistocene Park in Science Magazine, click here.

Anya Suslova, Student, Yakutsk State University

Tyler Llewellyn, Student, Western Washington University

As you may have gathered from the other blogs, we have just returned from a multiday trip up the Kolyma, a river that flows into the Arctic Ocean. We hired a ship to move the barge on which we are living, teaching, and collecting samples.  The barge would periodically park and when we would use tender boats to move us from the barge to sample various lakes and streams.  A nice combination of boating, hiking, and slogging through very wet ground.

The group has been incredible as a whole.  Working with students when you too feel young is an incredible experience. A lot of great energy is created by youthful interaction where both student and teacher are engaging in question and answer sessions.  The students have many good ideas and show a lot of promise as young scientists.  Sometimes I wonder which group (mentor v students) is learning more from this experience.   I am very impressed with the skill set of academic mentors on this trip.   Each person has been trained in different specialties (landscape ecology, biogeochemistry, limnology, dendrochronology, etc.) and looks at issues from their own, unique filters. I did not know many of the folks before this trip but feel very fortunate to spend a significant amount of time discovering this landscape with them. I think one thing is certain, with the expertise thus far, we have more questions than answers.  The good news is that Drs. Davidov and Zimov and their families, the primary founders and residence of the station, have pondered many of the same questions have provided answers or at least set up new hypotheses for us to test!  I imagine many of these answers have come from living and observing changes since their arrival in 1980.

This last trip we sampled many lakes, streams, and rivers placed within a landscape of ancient carbon, known as Yedoma.  This Yedoma from the Pleistocene era is quickly thawing due to a variety of global warming feedbacks.  As this ancient combination of ice and organic soil melt, the bones of ancient residents such as mammoths and lions are left for all to see. It is exciting to see the signs of the past at our feet. I kind of feel like a modern day Indiana Jones!  Upon closer reflection however, I now realize what the experts that have visited this station, such as Dr. Katey Walter from the University of Alaska, have been studying the last few years.  What happens if these old great carbon, deposits are released to the planet for all to experience?  Could the release of this ancient carbon that has been sequestered in the cold conditions of the ground tens of thousands of years feed back and further alter our planet’s climate?

Not sure if I know the answer however I do know that I am ready to develop my scientific skill sets to work in the Arctic and on climate change issues.

This “wild” location seems like one that is more tenable and tractable to investigate thanks to the Zimov and Davidov families that founded the station.  Moreover, it is critical to study these locations if we are going to create applied solutions to the issue of global climate change. I am sure I will be back to answer some scientific questions which I hope are both applied and basic in nature.

Sudeep Chandra
Assistant Professor of Limnology and Conservation Ecology

Today began by splitting into our study groups. The filled-in lake (which are called alas) group went back to Duvannyi Yar and found a large alas to take some measurements in. The permafrost group analyzed their data collected from Duvannyi Yar. The lake group picked invertebrates from samples collected the day before and worked on data.

The streams group (my group) took a boat further downstream to Kolymskoe, a Siberian town with a population of ~1000. While we traveled at 24mi/hr, we had an incredible view of the landscape adjacent to the river. It was very clear visually which side of the river was being eroded and which side was depositional. The vegetation changed remarkably quickly from grasses to scattered larches to forest. On the erosional side of the river we could see a clear transect of the soil layers beneath ground surface with vegetation on top of that. The land here was eroding from permafrost thaw leaving the soil even more susceptible to erosion from the river water flow. Along the river edge we could also see alas’ and filled in streams. The presence of permafrost makes soil even more susceptible to erosion, which is why some areas looked so cut into.  It was amazing to see these processes so clearly!

When we arrived at Kolymskoe we saw fishing boats scattered along shore and a large pile of coal sitting on the beach. We walked into town amongst wooden houses that looked like they were built in the 50’s or 60’s, Siberian dogs, and few other people. We went into a store for some supplies and it felt as if we had entered Soviet times. There were lines of identical school supplies, boots, clothing, irons, combs, zippers, …all the essential needs. The prices were calculated with an old-fashioned scale and abacus. It was interesting to think about how this town had been established back during Soviet rule, and how this has carried over into modern times. Our goal at Kolymskoe was to meet up with the man who runs the station that measures river discharge on the Kolyma. Max, Sergei Zimov, and Kate B. talked to him about methods of discharge data collection. We learned that discharge is measured by river height and velocity (discharge has units of km³/yr or m³/sec).  This is measured twice a day, and once compiled is sent to the Yakutian government, which is why the data have been unavailable online. After exchanging thank yous (thank you=”Spa-cee-bah”) with him, we headed back to the Kolyma to take samples. We collected about 5 water samples today in different areas. Our goal is to determine the differences in carbon and nutrient content between water in tributaries coming from varying landscape types. We are looking at two scales: small stream variability as well as an overall survey of the Kolyma watershed. We are measuring variables such as temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen percent and content, latitude and longitude, turbidity, and conductivity.The evening consisted of data entry and enjoying an amazing multimedia presentation of a picture slideshow and Polaris Project “themesong” put together by the group. It was good to reflect on the trip thusfar and think about further work to be done in the coming days while the barge travelled to our temporary home in Cherskiy.

We arrived at the Cherskiy Research station a few days ago.  Check out our location by typing in “Cherskiy Russia” on Google maps. The ride in an old Russian turbo prop plane went much better than I had imagined.  I think the energy of the students, great company, and incredible views from 17,500 feet of an arctic landscape (filled mountain forests and many lowland lakes and rivers) helped me NOT think about the rustic, steel like nature of the plane.  Accommodations at the station have been wonderful.  The barge on which we are living has two toilets (that flush!), a kitchen, a Russian style sauna, showers, and small bunk style rooms that smell of fresh milled larch.

From what I can tell, Cherskiy represents a Shangri-la for a natural historian.  Whether plants, animals, insects or microbes there is so much to observe.  For a place that is bitter cold in the winter (-40C), the summer seasons comes alive with remarkable biological diversity.  One of the primary scientists at the station, Dr. Davidov, provided a short introduction to the area.  There are over 100 bird species, many rodents, wolverines, bears, wolves, and deer in the area.  Yesterday, as we walked into town, a Pika perched up on a rock off the road.  The forest structure near the station is dominated by 2 species of larch trees but there is a strong, riparian transition zone from the large forest to the river. Here, as expected you find willows (dwarf and otherwise), alder, etc..  A remarkable place to study terrestrial plant-animal interactions.

It interesting how similar the arctic environment is to our semi arid ecosystems of the Great Basin in the United States.  Moisture clearly is a major driver of ecosystem process and productivity in both ecosystems. The mechanisms of moisture delivery to the landscape however are vastly different.  In the arctic, the active thaw melt of the permafrost which is 10,000 years or older, controls vegetation composition and production during the summer growing season (with obvious feedbacks of the vegetation to the thaw process).  In our temperate semi arid climate, moisture is derived from snow melt and summer thunderstorms.  There are meadow ecosystems created by spring/ groundwater discharge and surface water impoundments, which produce amazing centers of biological diversity.   The more I walk around the more I realize this landscape is an incredible place to test some of the dominant ecological concepts governing river and lake dynamics.

In temperate climates, much effort is going in to understanding the linkages between terrestrial aquatic environments in recent years.  We are trying to do this at Castle Lake Research station however most of this research occurs in the stream and river ecozones and their adjacent habitats in temperature environments.  The patch work of lakes in this region of the arctic with different hydrological connections would make excellent study sites for the same questions.  Moreover the systems here seem to have a broad range of nutrient (nitrogen, phosphorus, dissolved organic carbon) conditions allowing for broad scale comparisons across watersheds.

Enough science and a little reflection. Much of my “free” time in the last few days have been spent thinking about my mentors in ecology.  Many of whose papers I have read and presentations I have listened to at meetings. Some are dead (Edmondson, Nakano, Polis, Wetzel), retired/ retiring (Richards, Goldman, Kitchell, Moyle, Jassby, Reuter), and others that continue to be the best thinkers in their subdiscipline (Carpenter, Melack, Schladow, Brett, Vander Zanden, Mueller-Solger).  The conversations we have had and/ or the papers you have written have greatly influenced my thoughts and intellectual development.  Moreover many of you have provided opportunities and encouragement to explore new systems and live an adventurous life.   Thank you for your support.  I am living a blessed and incredible life.  All I needed to do is come to the arctic to develop this thought! If all bodes well, hopefully we can make broad scale comparisons between our temperate and arctic ecosystems well into the future. After all, getting here is more than half of the struggle.  Hope everyone back home is well.

Sudeep Chandra
Assistant Professor of Limnology and Conservation Ecology
University of Nevada- Reno

Day three on the barge, and we are currently in the middle of the Kolyma river. The barge is being pulled along south so we can experience the range of environments along the river, and eventually bear witness to dynamic changes in permafrost when we reach Duvannyi Yar. So we have some time on our hands as we wait for the barge to stop, and I find myself thinking about lunch in Yakutsk (this is no reflection on our culinary experience on the barge, which has been great). Just around the corner from our hotel-like structure in Yakutsk we found a little cafeteria-style restaurant where I tried my first piroshky. In case you have never had one, a piroshky is a pastry filled with potatoes or vegetables or meat, whatever you prefer. The version of choice this day was deep-fried and filled with meat and was aptly described by Andy Bunn as a ‘meat donut’.

Upon further reflection, it occurred to me that the meat donut is a metaphor for one of our objectives on the Polaris Project.

<!–[if !supportEmptyParas]–> <!–[endif]–>

We don’t normally associate donuts and meat as belonging together in the same mouthful, nor would most of us naturally assume that the juxtaposition of these two would result in something better than the sum of the parts, that there would be a synergy between them that would result in a tasty mix of flavors, and yet it works. Spectacularly.

<!–[if !supportEmptyParas]–> <!–[endif]–>

In our work on the Polaris Project, we are attempting to achieve a similar synergy. We are starting from the premise that focusing the energies of an interdisciplinary group of scientists on a common objective, specifically understanding factors influencing the transport of C and N from forests to ocean will generate a more complete and effective result. The mix of students and faculty we currently have includes a wide diversity of skills and theoretical and conceptual backgrounds. We hope that mixing us all together here in Cherskiy and immersing ourselves completely in our Polaris world, we can achieve a level of understanding greater than any of us (or our disciplines) could achieve on our own. So far, this seems to be working. We are maintaining our sanity, getting some work done, and some interesting ideas are emerging from uncountable conversations in the field and on the ‘barge of science’.

<!–[if !supportEmptyParas]–> <!–[endif]–>

We can, I believe, live up to the standards of collaborative success represented by the meat donut.

When we woke up this morning we were slowly moving south along the Kolyma River.  Our destination is a two-day trip to Duvanniy Yar, a place were there are large permafrost exposures.  This morning we were confined to the barge as we moved upstream.  After going in circles for a while, we found a good place to dock for the day.  A group of us including Katey W, John S, Kate B, Sudeep C, Laura M, and Boyd Z went out in a smaller boat to collect samples at a stream and a lake.  We pulled up to dock the boat and I saw something I was not expecting.  There was a house built on a small strip of land in between the river and the lake.  It was surprising to see someone living out there so far away from any town.  The yard was littered with various pieces of scrap metal and old, broken down machinery.  The man who lives there, Lenid, is a fisherman and he had lots of fish hanging outside in chicken wire boxes to dry.  It was an amazing site to see.  He invited us into his house and gave us fish to eat.  He had prepared the fish in so many different ways and each was more delicious than the one before.  It was an amazing cultural experience.

The walk to the stream was not difficult; it was walking along the stream bank that proved to be difficult.  There were trees all along the bank that proved very challenging to walk through.  It seemed like no one had ever been there before.  We found some good points along the stream and lake to take samples.  Laura and Boyd worked on collecting methane bubbles.  They had two traps that they placed in the water and then poked at the streambed to make the bubbles come out.  They then put the collected gas into vacuum-sealed glass bottles for storage.  John, Kate, and I took water samples from the stream.  We filtered the water into three bottles and used a probe to measure the water pH, temperature, and conductivity.  The water samples will be analyzed back at the field station in Cherskiy and if possible, will be transported back to the United States for further analysis.  We are mainly looking at the amount of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) but we will also measure the amounts of various nutrients and ions.

Lenid came back to the barge with us for dinner.  I was really glad that he came because even though he did not speak any English, it was still possible to learn from him what his life is like.  He sang us Old Russian songs while playing the guitar and you could sense the emotion in the song as he played.  I could feel the power of the song even without understanding the words.

Katie Abbott, student, St. Olaf College

<!–[endif]–>

-Andy Bunn, WWU

 In the afternoon we split up into interest groups, each looking at different parts of the Siberian ecosystem.  One group looked at stream ecology.  John and Max lead the group of students and PIs, who used a YSI to take conductivity measurements.  Another group assembled bubble traps for methane collection in lakes;  relating to Katey and Laura’s research.   The third group was under Andy’s instruction.  They took tree cores of Siberian larch in the area near the station.  It was fascinating for each group to learn something about the process of collecting field data. 

 We are looking forward to hearing what the rest of the group thought about the day, and what sort of knowledge they gained!  Also looking forward to tomorrow, we are travelling in the barge to another location upstream!  More on that to come once we have internet again!

Katie Abbott, student St.Olaf

Kate Willis aka Keterin Villis, student Clark University

After an early morning wake up (4:30 am) and breakfast on the way to the airport, we left Yakutsk in a small prop airplane.  While there had been quite a bit of disagreement over Cherskii’s time zone and the duration of the flight, we were all very excited to finally get to our destination.

The energy level on the flight was incredible. All of the students and PIs marveled at the landscape below. Peppered with lakes and small winding tributaries to the Kolyma River, the views were truly breathtaking. We bounced ideas off each other regarding the differences in color of lakes, sediment levels, and various landscape patterns due to the permafrost. As a side note, this was the first flight many of us had been on where the flight attendant took naps longer than most of the passengers!

After landing on a dirt runway, we excitedly caught our first glimpse of Cherskii, our home-town for the next 2 weeks. The militia made a brief appearance to check our accumulation of documents (this seems to be a Russian pattern), and we boarded a bus to the Northeast Science Station. During the ride, we met Sergei Zimov, the station director. He founded the site more than 20 years ago and has conducted numerous projects on its grounds. After a quick trip, we reached our home: a floating barge. While it sounds rustic, the barge is actually quite beautiful, with 2 showers, a full kitchen and even a home-made sauna. It definitely exceeded many of our expectations. We picked bunkmates, settled in and got ready for a tour of the facilities. Katey Walter and Nikita (Sergei’s son) showed us the Station’s 2 lab buildings (where we will be working), guest house, and the fleet of boats at our disposal. Tyler,Boyd, and I went on a walk, just to survey the gorgeous landscape. The Station overlooks a tributary of the Kolyma, with views of two mountains in the distance. This is clearly one of the most beautiful places in the world (the mosquitoes have realized this as well, they are here in what seems like record numbers).

Luckily, none of us are vegetarians, as we would’ve missed out on the first dinner in Cherskii: moose, with potatoes and stew. We laid out the safety rules of the barge, with the help of Sergei and got ready for bed. Cherskii is more than any of us expected and should prove to be an amazingly interesting research location. Conversations full of thoughtful ideas and research proposals tend to be the norm, a perfect base for intellectual growth.

Going into our first night on the barge, we are well traveled, excited and ready to explore. We also keep in mind Sergei’s Rule of Mosquito:

“If you lick your hand, slap your back and have 100 mosquitoes, there is mosquitoes. If you grab the air and have more than 4 mosquitoes, there is mosquitoes.”

-Matt Ruppel

Student, Holy Cross

Waking up fairly early to a delicious breakfast in our hotel (thank you Katey and others), we began our day with a quick trip to a local internet cafe to check our emails and to see if we could connect with the outside world. It was nice to walk around downtown Yakutsk, taking in many of the local squares and city sites, and we were able to see more of the culture and infrastructure of this city. Some of us had the opportunity to swim in the Lena River, Russia’s longest and second largest by volume. The warm weather and clear day along with an expansive beach and the cool waters was a great experience and something you don’t think of experiencing in Siberia.  Other students and PI’s had the opportunity to explore the surrounding floodplain and older parts of the city. It’s very dusty, concrete, and quite dry but definitely full of history and culture.

In the afternoon, the PI’s gave a quick introduction to the Cherskiy region. We learned about yedoma – which comprises the majority of permafrost in the Cherskiy area although its origin is unknown (either aeolian or fluvial) and it contains ~2% organic carbon and between 50-90% ice. One of the PI’s, Karen Frey, brought several large scale maps of the area to give us an idea of the local and regional topography and also provided some remote sensing, satellite, and land cover data.  Kate and Anya worked with Karen, Bill, and John on some GIS data Karen had downloaded to help identify different features from some satellite imagery and delineate different soil areas and watersheds.  Sudeep and Andy helped Matt and Boyd sift through and analyze phytoplankton from previous water column data to extract chlorophyll values from different lakes in the Cherskiy area. Katie Abbott and Tyler collaborated with Katey Walter, looking at physical properties of lakes in the Cherskiy area, including nitrogen and phosphorus data Katey had previously collected from lakes we will soon visit!!!!!  When in Cherskiy, they will generate graphs and analyze the results.

Still somewhat confused on which time zone we were in, which one we were going to, and just exactly what was going on in general, we passed out around 9:15. It was still very light out from our hotel-like structure. More than anything, we were desperately excited to reach our final destination the following afternoon.

-Boyd Zapatka, Student, Clark University

-Tyler Llewellyn, Student, W. Washington University

Holly here. I just wanted to let everyone know that I’m still alive and I made it back ok…just ten pounds lighter (new Russian dieting technique?). Turns out that food poisoning was likely (I think it was that soup that Katie and I both ate in the airport…but she only had a cup). It was compounded by the  strong antibiotics that I had just finished for a sinus infection, which pretty much destroyed my stomach. All and all, it was just very unfortunate timing and some serious bad luck. Needless to say, I’m pretty devastated. I’m struggling to find something positive in it…if not just the experience of being sick in a foreign country and learning how to deal and be better prepared.

I do sincerely wish you all the best with travel and research and experiencing a new and beautiful place. Stay healthy! (I hear vodka is an often prescribed cure the the common cold.. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help from home…even if it’s just trying to ID plants from photos!

Andy, thank you so much for your care and kindness….and Kate, you saved my life. I could never repay you.

Happy travels!

Our trip to date has been filled with learning experiences for all involved. I feel honored to be part of a project where students are experiencing different aspect of Russian culture and different disciplines of the Earth sciences. I have spent some time in Southern Siberia, mostly studying lakes and river environments.  Those of you back home know that I have had a love-hate relationship with this part of the world.  This trip has been refreshing since I am able to relive the novelty of Siberia through those that are visiting for the first time. The smell of larch bark, the warmth of people, and also the stern, unhappy look of others makes me love this place and remember the great thing we have back at home.

I think as investigators have  much to learn about science and this novel place through the eyes of our participants.  While students from my University are not on this trip this year, I am have learned how each individual can contribute to improving relations between our countries, science and humanity.  One of our students shows a strong enthusiasm for geology while another seeks to determine their future career path.  The good news is that anything can happen in Siberia!  I believe this experience already is starting to shape the lives of all of us.  I know that I am thinking about how I may contribute to our field.  If all goes well, I will also be able to contribute to the station we are about to visit and the local culture.  Many thanks for Katey Walter, one of our leaders and my old graduate school housemate for involving me with this project.

Looking forward to the future even though the topic of climate change and potential change to our lives back home seems uncertain.

Sudeep

Assistant Prof of Limnology and Conservation Ecology

Max Holmes

Project Director, Woods Hole Research Center

-Andy, WWU Professor and reluctant blogmaster.

The major attraction of the day was a tour of the Permafrost Institute.  Even before visiting the institute, we saw the effects of thawing permafrost from older buildings sinking and newer buildings having elaborate pillars to anchor their foundations to the permafrost.  This problem is prevalent due to Yakutsk being the largest city in the world built on continuous permafrost.  The tour took us down into two tunnels in the permafrost, one 4 meters and another 12 meters below the surface.  The temperature difference was striking!  We started at 30 C at the surface and experienced -6 C in the deeper tunnel.  Along the sides of the tunnels there were exposed plant roots that are at least 55,000 years old that could be mistaken for being alive!  After the permafrost tour, we went to a very nice Pleistocene museum at Yakutsk State University.  They had a collection of various megafauna skeletons characteristic of the period.  Due to everyone being exhausted after several days of traveling, we went back to the hotel to get a good nights sleep after getting something to eat.

 Tyler Llewellyn, Student, Western Washington University

Katie Abbott, Student, St. Olaf

From the Moscow airport

We have been traveling for a long time now and are waiting for, in some cases, our third red-eye in four days, as others have already mentioned.  We have used this time to get to know each other and to begin what will be an ongoing conversation about Arctic science.  We are also learning some lessons about the process of science, as many of us so-called ‘PI’s’ have at best a vague idea of what we will be accomplishing this trip, at least scientifically (don’t worry, our travel plans are well worked out!).  The beginning of a new project is a chaotic process under the best of conditions, and is complicated by the fact that most of us have never even seen the field sites we are speculating about.  But we have already had a number of productive conversations, and some tentative plans are forming.  Fluid would certainly be an apt description of these plans.  We are all dealing well with uncertainty at this point, and in fact it adds a certain excitement, as students and faculty both have an opportunity to contribute to the development of ideas.The Moscow airport, however, is not the ideal location for the development of these ideas, so we are looking forward to our next destination, where we will have a chance to look at maps of field sites, check out some data, and refine our ideas.

We had our first taste of borscht which was delicious! The food was plentiful and flavorful in the hotel’s cafeteria and left no one with an upset stomach! Later in the day we were able to tour Moscow taking in Red Square, St. Basil’s Cathedral, the Kremlin, GUM (the mall), the Moscow River, the Peter the Great Statue, Lenin’s Mausoleum, MAACDONALD.  Despite the pouring rain and wind, it definitely exceeded our expectations of what Moscow was going to look like.

After another delicious dinner, we all got a needed good night’s rest and woke up to clear skies and cool weather.  After breakfast, all the students were able to chat and meet with each scientist/professor involved in the program to discuss our interests, expectations, possible research ideas, and just bounce information off each other and learn more about our specific interests. 

Right now, we are in one of Moscow’s many airports waiting to catch our flight to Yakutsk. It’s another red-eye, the third for some of us, and is an 8-hour flight across the Siberian landscape. We’re all anxious-excited to visit Yakutsk, the largest city built on continuous permafrost. We’re planning to visit the Permafrost Institute, which should be ‘cool’ hahaha.

Also, permafrost thaws, it does not melt.

Kate, Boyd, Matt

Everybody was feeling pretty ragged as Kate Bulygina met the two minibuses she had hired and we loaded all the gear into one and all the people into the other. Moscow is so expensive and there are so many of us, we would have blown our whole budget if we wanted to stay in the heart of the city. Instead we drove to what Max accurately described as a ‘hotel-like structure’. Our lodgings turned out to be a Soviet-style dormitory north of the city on the greenbelt that surrounds Moscow.

It was raining and warm and green. The landscape was dominated by paper birch and if it wasn’t for the Cyrillic signs I might have thought we were in the outskirts of Boston.

We had lunch (borscht!) but given the 11-hour time change from my home in Bellingham Washington I was a little turned around on mealtimes. We piled back in the minibus and visited a wet and windy Red Square. Several of the students commented that St Peter’s Basilica looked good enough to eat. The weather kept the crowds down and I appreciated the windswept and shinning pavement – it felt lonesome and very Russian.

We returned, had dinner and gathered all the students together to talk about what lay ahead. Each of the instructors on the course sat down with each of the students. During those head-to-heads I was impressed by the intellectual curiosity of and verve of each of the students. Our trip has just begun but I’m excited for what lays ahead. I’m writing this from the airport in Moscow as we wait for my third overnight flight that we’ll take to Yakutsk. The Russian airport computer I’m working on has a tendancy to lapse into Cyrillic so I’ll end it here and let the students take over.

Boyd Zapatka

After several months of work, on March 16, 2007, we submitted our Polaris Project proposal to the National Science Foundation’s International Polar Year grant competition.  Six months later we learned that our proposal was successful – the project would actually happen.  We’ve now completed our first round of on-campus courses at the collaborating colleges and universities, and it one week we launch our first of three annual field courses in the Siberian Arctic (which are really the core of the Polaris Project).  Wow – it is kind of hard to believe this is actually going to happen!

I’m actually surprised about how relaxed I am right now.  I know that we’ll have surprises and challenges along the way, but at the moment everything is just about as good as it could be.  We have a magnificent group of students and scientists (well, really all scientists – some just a bit older than others!) and the remarkably complicated logistics necessary to undertake this adventure are all falling nicely into place.  So, in just over a week, we’ll all meet in JFK Airport in New York and then travel together first to Moscow, then Yakutsk, then Cherskiy.  Though I’ve been to Siberia many times now, as I sit here now on a Friday evening at home with my wife, 2 and half year old soon, and dog, I still have a hard time imagining that I’ll be in the far reaches of the Siberian Arctic in just 10 days or so – crazy…

My expectation is that all of the Polaris Project team will learn a tremendous amount about the Arctic, about climate change, about working in a large collaborative project, and about themselves.  Here we go!

Max

(Click on the thumbnail for a better view)

So far Max and Karen are predicting further decline. I’m predicting a rebound and others fall in between. Each of us has reasons with various levels of sophistication for making those predictions. Karen thinks that the way things are shaping up this year and the age of the ice, indicate a new record minimum in September. I think that last year’s minimum was extreme and although we might have tipped to a new state it’s too early to say for sure. I based my guess on statistical modeling of trends (using an AR2 model) and the cool state of Pacific.

Like many things in the climate system, gauging sea ice changes is complicated. It involves understanding ocean and atmospheric temperatures and circulation and the way ice accumulates and ablates.  This is physics that is pretty tough in and of itself. But sea ice involves a classic feedback to the climate system through changing albedo.

The ice-albedo feedback is an easy concept to understand and easy to describe qualitatively but a quantitative understanding is far more difficult. Here is the qualitative story: the snow-covered sea ice reflects most of the incoming sunlight. Albedo (Latin for white) is just a fancy term for how bright things are. Once the climate warms the ice melts which lowers the albedo, resulting in more absorbed energy from the sun, increasing melting, and further lowers the albedo. Taking this qualitative story and turning it into numbers that can predict sea ice extent is where it gets tricky and this is why cryospheric scientists and climate modelers get out of bed in the morning. 

What’s the bottom line in summer 2008 sea ice? What will happen? We’ll have to wait and see.

http://nsidc.org/news/press/2007_seaiceminimum/20071001_pressrelease.html

While onboard, I will be collecting water samples for measuring chlorophyll-a concentrations, measuring optical properties of the water column, and recording observations of sea ice properties and dynamics, all of which will help to validate and interpret satellite imagery. For more information about what it’s like to conduct research and live onboard the Healy, watch these brief videos at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WN80g16rx8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfKvNydpbR0

In addition, each hour, the ship posts a real-time photo taken from its “aloftcon” at the very top of the ship at:

http://mgds.ldeo.columbia.edu/healy/photos/aloftcon/2008

On March 6, the Healy began its transit from its home port in Seattle to Dutch Harbor, Alaska, where I will board. From March 13-26 or so, I encourage you browse the aloftcon photos as I would expect to see some dramatic photos of sea ice once our fieldwork gets underway.

I am an aquatic an aquatic ecologist and biogeochemist interested in carbon and nutrient cycling between terrestrial and aquatic systems, the cryosphere and atmosphere.

I am also one of the organizers of the Polaris Project. I have worked in Cherskii since 2000, and have a passion for science in Russia, particularly when it involves methane and fire! To view an example of lighting arctic lake methane on fire, please go to research videos link at my website.

Research Interests

I conduct research on methane and carbon dioxide emissions from arctic and temperate lakes and wetlands. I am interested in processes that govern greenhouse gas emissions from lakes, including thermokarst (permafrost) thaw, modern plant productivity, geology, and landscape scale changes lake area that result in both positive and negative feedbacks to climate change.

My research program uses environmental gradients, isotopes, and remote sensing as powerful tools for understanding basic patterns and processes in lake ecosystems. I use field, laboratory and modeling experiments to address research questions at the ecosystem scale, and environmental gradients and remote sensing to apply these results in a landscape-scale context.

Six Polaris Project scientists attended AGU this year. We were all really excited about the Polaris Project so it was great to be able to get much of the group together before we all head to Siberia next summer. Now we’re eagerly waiting for students to APPLY for the 2008 field course – remember, the application deadline is Feb. 1.

In future years, Polaris Project students will have the chance to attend the AGU meeting in San Francisco with project scientists. Several students will participate in Dec. 2010 (alumni from all Polaris Project classes), and we hope to have funding for students to attend the conference in 2008 and 2009 as well. This will be the chance to Polaris Project participants to tell the scientific world about there experiences in Siberia!

The first was a seminar from the American Meteorological Society featuring research talks from Scott Luthcke, Mark Serreze, and Konrad Steffen. The streaming video is currently available here, but I don’t know how long that will be online. The main page for the seminar is here. Links to the slides from each speaker are here and that’s a cool resource to have. The bottom line is that the rates of melt (loss of area and thickness) on sea and land are blowing everybody away – and these scientists are talking increasingly about tipping points in the arctic in terms of ice melt. Big stuff for sure.

The other thing that caught my attention was a broadcast of the BBC program One Planet on the Northwest Passage. Here is the show description (they don’t archive the show descriptions for some inane reason):

The North West Passage is a sea-route with almost mythical status, twisting through the ice of the Arctic north of Canada. Hundreds of explorers in past centuries searched for this route linking the Atlantic and the Pacific. But they perished in the ice and cold. This summer, the North West Passage was free of ice for the first time. This warming brings great opportunities but also dangers. The BBC’s environment correspondent, David Shukman, joins a Canadian coastguard ship to travel the North West Passage and report on the remarkable changes of recent years.

Here Here is a link to the audio file. The thing that caught my attention here was the level of detail paid to the geopolitical aspects of melt in the Arctic. Just how much usable hydrocarbon is down there?

I’m really looking forward to hearing the latest on ice melt at the AGU meeting.

There are a few reasons you might be here. The most likely is that you are a student at one of the Project’s institutions and you are interested in the field course in the Siberian Arctic. If so, great! Check out this post as well as looking around the rest of the site.

If you stumbled on the website and are interested in information about changes in the Arctic, you might try the International Polar Year website or some other arctic blogs we like here and here. The Polaris Project is just getting rolling and we are looking forward to years of productive science and education.

To get a feel for the Northeast Science Station and team member Sergei Zimov look here.

Students on the field course will be introduced to a variety of arctic environments including boreal forest, tundra, lakes, rivers, estuaries, and the coastal ocean and conduct their own mini research projects and help project scientists plan extended field courses that will take place in 2009 and 2010. In fact, 1-2 of the student participants from 2008 will have the opportunity to return as course assistants in 2009.

The interdisciplinary approach emphasized throughout the Polaris Project mirrors the way that complex environmental science is actually done. We’ll stress the links between the different environments and explore how climate change is impacting them. Students will work closely with leading scientists and share in the excitement of scientific discover. The Polaris Project will be superb preparation for students wishing to pursue graduate studies in environmental sciences, but we seek a diverse student body which might also include non-science majors.

We expect that the Polaris Project will be an exceptional learning experience and tremendous adventure for all participants. You’ll see an extremely remote part of the world, get a first-hand view of “global warming”, conduct your own research project, and be part of a team of enthusiastic undergraduate students and scientists working together to understand the changing Arctic. If climate change, the Arctic, adventure, and teamwork appeal to you, please apply to participate in the Polaris Project 2008 field course in Siberia! Don’t forget, online applications are due February 1, 2008.

I told Max that he should get somebody to do this. He displayed the kind of managerial brilliance that I aspire to by somehow convincing me that not only could I make the website, but that it would be easy. Apparently, I’m a sucker because I somehow agreed with him even though I’m a programming hack and have never done web design before (and it shows, I know).

I hope the blog takes off. Max will be contacting all the team members (and students as they are selected) to periodically make posts on the work we are doing and how it relates to the Polaris Project.