Back at the Lab

There is little doubt among scientists that, of the many wonders of doing science, fieldwork would definitely be its most glamorous side. This is especially true when working in the field in Churchill, Manitoba in mid-September. Check out this short video to share in some of that excitement:

When I first learned that I would be headed to the Arctic on this special assignment, I never suspected I would learn to treasure my bug net more than my thermal underwear!

As important as the fieldwork is to the science process, the field component would be utterly incomplete without the necessary follow-up work in the lab. Labwork is the handmaiden of the field. Our Team is operating under that very same assumption here this week. We have designated tasks divided up between separate field teams and lab teams. In addition, we have extra duties like data collection, photo archiving, equipment management, and kitchen duty just to make sure all the bases are covered.

Our primary objectives this week are to gather soil pit and permafrost core samples to determine their organic carbon content, and to survey tree seedling growth and distribution data to measure the advancement or decline of treeline along the edge of the tundra. While our seedling surveying is exclusively done in the field, our soil and permafrost sampling requires extensive work back at the lab. As a Team, we spend many hours:
-sorting samples by labels
-determining soil color using Munsell Soil Charts
-measuring soil conductivity to determine ion concentration
-measuring soil pH to determine acidity or alkalinity
-massing wet soil samples
-baking wet samples in a drying oven at 105°C for 12 hours
-massing dry soil samples to calculate moisture loss
-burning dry soil samples in a muffle oven at 550°C for 3 hours
-massing burnt soil ashes all to finally calculate organic carbon composition through loss on ignition

These detailed profiles of seedling vigor and soil composition will ultimately be added to the existing bank of data collected in previous years of these long-term investigations. Periodically, the results are published in scientific journals or presented as papers at conferences. Eventually, this data either becomes available in textbook form or available as research data for textbooks.

Since I’ve already asked you some tough questions this week, I have decided to ask you a few easier ones (perhaps I’m either bug delirious or just happy tomorrow is our first day off since Saturday): Why do you think it is important to have a definite purpose when collecting and analyzing data? What might happen if you don’t have one? How do you think communication and teamwork play a role in successful laboratory practices? What should be done when you discover that an error in procedure has occurred?

I want to send out a special thanks to all the students, faculty, administration, and staff who made Larkin history by making our first-time ever Skype video-conference from the edge of the Arctic a great success! Your questions were well prepared and challenging, I can only hope that my answers were equally thought provoking. I also want to thank HSBC, whose sponsorship through their Earthwatch Climate Partnership made this opportunity for Larkin students possible.