Joanne is a 2009 participant of the Polaris Project. She attends the University of Nevada-Reno where she studies Ecohydrology. Joanne is from Incline Village on Lake Tahoe. She is working on a project with Russian permafrost scientists to describe the depth and chemistry of the frozen soils that enter the waters of the Kolyma.
Most of the students and PIs are in Moscow, preparing to board their flight home today. Blaize, Erin, Travis and I are in Cherskiy, continuing our research and finishing up our projects. During my remaining time here, I’m continuing my soil BOD experiments and conducting nutrient limitation experiments. In lakes, rivers and streams, rates of [...]
Hi everyone! As of late, those of us working with soil have been busy with making soil extracts. Sam’s earlier post gives an indication as to our all-hours filtering schedule, so I’ll write more on what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. Soil contains lots of “stuff”- plant material, leaf litter, roots, minerals, and [...]
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 [...]
Hello everyone! In the past 48 hours members of the Polaris Project have coalesced into different research teams. Sam and I are the terrestrial team, determined to quantify how different watershed characteristics affect the contribution of nutrients to thermokarst lakes. Watersheds influence the water quality of aquatic ecosystems. We hope to answer three questions concerning [...]
Hi everyone! Only six more days until our departure! 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 [...]
As you may be able to tell from the year-round addition of blog entries, participation in the Polaris Project stretches far beyond our month-long stay in Siberia. Right now, many of the Polaris participants are finishing up their preparations for the trip. Today, for me, this meant building piezometers. Piezometers are essentially specialized observation wells [...]
By now, I’m sure all the new students have heard rumors of the cunning behemoths otherwise known as Siberian mosquitoes. The rumors, I am sorry to confirm, are true. The moment it becomes warm, the Siberian mosquitoes and horseflies will emerge from hiding to feast on fresh, unsuspecting Polaris students. Regular defenses, such as head [...]
Hi everyone! Like the previous posts have said, we had a mini 2009 Polaris Project reunion at the State of the Arctic Conference in Miami last week. It was great to see everyone again, and attending this conference made me really excited to go back to Cherskiy this summer. Boyd, Blaize, Moira, Claire, Erin, and [...]
Check out this article in this week’s issue of The Economist on Arctic permafrost thaw. http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14119825
Hello everyone. I hadn’t written a blog entry in awhile, so now that I am home and rested I thought I should post an update on where I am and where I’m going with my project. During our three weeks in Cherskiy, Valentin, Nickolay, and I collected over 130 soil samples from 14 different profile [...]
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 [...]
Hello everyone. Over the last few days all of the students have selected and initiated our projects examining different aspects of the ecosystem around Cherskiy. Nickolay and I are working with Valentine and Sudeep to profile the soil in the Shuchi Lake watershed and examine how the soil’s composition affects the quality of the water [...]
Hello everyone. The past few days have been really busy here at the Northeast Science Station. The past couple days have been spent moving into and preparing the new lab. The lab is absolutely gorgeous. When you walk into the door, there is a cozy round center room with a wood stove, reminiscent of a [...]
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 [...]
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, [...]