Tuesday September 30, 2008

Excitement spreads throughout the Churchill, Manitoba: PERMAFROST EXISTS!!!!

We found it down at 71 centimeters in the tundra. The ground was saturated and very, very, cold. Ms. Gill found herself standing in it and her teammate Doug, a teacher from the Bronx, did a handstand.

After a long day of tree coring that included lunch with black flies in our faces, it was a welcome ending to all our work in the field.

Back at the lab, we mounted core samples, entered data, and  cleaned the van (which was filled with tree parts from all the samples we took). Steve, our researcher, gave a rap up presentation of the work we had accomplished. A few jokes, last minute comments on the work we did and off we all went to blog.

Coming to  Churchill as part of the Earthwatch Live in the Field Fellowship has been a unique adventure. Certainly, if you asked me if I would ever come this far north, the answer would have been no. If you asked me what climate change meant for students in Brooklyn, New York, I could have given you a half dozen answers. But actually participating in research that is putting down the roots of changes taking place on our planet is amazing. 

What I try to impart to the students at P.S. 115 is that the world is a very large place and we are small pieces of it regardless of where we live. I will never again read about a scientific investigation without having a personal investment in the hours it took to make the hypothesis a reality.

I worked harder here physically than when I am teaching. The work is often tedious and boring.  The people who work on climate research don't make tons of money, they don't live in mansions but they live to prove their theories of why the world around them is changing.

As students who will one day take charge of the world, you need to take the lead in what a world where the seasons are longer or hotter, winter disappears, habitats of various species are shrinking or even disappearing , and animals who live just in the Jamaica Bay Salt Marsh become extinct. Does this matter? How will it effect you? 

               WHAT CAN WE DO IN OUR LITTLE CORNER TO PROTECT OUR WORLD?

SEE YOU ALL ON THURSDAY.

THANKS FOR ALL YOUR THOUGHTS.

KEEP CHECKING THE BLOG.

MS. GILL

Monday September 29, 2008

Sunday morning and we will spend a full day working in the field. When we got up, we were told to make bag lunches to take with us. So out came platters of lunch meat, egg salad, lettuce and tomatoes, assorted breads, and cookies. I must say that the baked goods here are delicious.  The temperature had dropped quite a bit so we had to really bundle up. it was the first time that I had put on most of the layers i brought with me. I had a little bit of time before we left so I went to look over my pictures. When I looked out the window, I saw the sky. The sun was just coming up and it was shades of pink, orange and purple. I ran with my camera up the the dome (which is an enclosed  bubble on the roof of the center, and started snapping pictures. (to get to the dome I climb a steep stairway, and then a ladder that is at a odd angle).

The light was just beginning to come up. As you can see from the picture it was beautiful.

We went back to our field and finished our "destructive sampling" of the tree saplings. We then went out to a field that is further away to start the process over again. Here is a picture to the right of us searching for the seedlings. Some are less than a centimeter high. We began with searching for seedlings as they are hard to find. The lichen was very thick as we were in a forest upland location. There were a great many colors and one was called fairy lichen. Below is a picture of the area "BLK" where we were working. 

With all that lichen and moss, it is very difficult to find the tiny seedlings. After awhile, your knees begin to ache, and if you are on a downhill slant, your rear end is in the air and your chin on the ground. All of us get distracted and stand up to take pictures. My teammates were an extremely cheerful group, and the jokes helped us get through what were often tedious tasks. For me, it was interesting to note how laborious scientific research can be and it takes a certain individual to take on this type of career. Yet, the tasks we performed in  collecting the data needed to be accomplished and an individual who is interested in the world and travel can find a calling.  But at the same time, we often found such interesting specimens that you left the site at the end of the day exhausted, hungry, but satisfied.

Here are Carly and Adam our two polar bear watchers. 

Here is "fairy tale" lichen.

Saturday was our day off and it was extremely busy. We had a fantastic tour of the Churchill area. Our guide Sheldon was knowledge, funny, and adept at dealing with a group of teachers who ask countless questions. he also was a wealth of information about local color and history. The day started off extremely cold and we were warned to bundle up. I had on my usual layers but I must say that the center staff was right: It was cold!

 We saw fissures in a tundra area where the freezing , thawing, freezing, thawing has opened up fissures in the surface. The ground below is extremely cold. The main question everyone kept asking was: "Will we see a polar bear?" The answer was a YES! So off we went to hunt one down. We found a polar bear that our guide, Sheldon said was at least 1000 pounds. we found another bear up on a rock ledge that appeared to be eating some large animal. The bear was engrossed in what it was doing and was barely moving especially when a helicopter came over head. Apparently, polar bears are afraid of the helicopters because that is how they are transported back to the wild. Polar bears up here are tagged to monitor them in their travels as well as when they enter into human settlements. If a polar bear is a continuous offender at hanging out where there is human habitation, they are put into the polar bear jail and not feed as a punishment. after, a time they are then taken by helicopter back to their natural habitat in the hope they will stay there.

Here is a picture of the polar bear tanks used to capture the animals.

This is the jail where bears with bad behavior are kept until they can be returned to their natural habitat.

Do you know what a "habitat" is?

How much food do you think polar bears eat in a day? What is the purpose of putting the polar bears in the jail?

We also saw a number of other wildlife on our tour. 

The picture on the left is of the Arctic fox and the one on the right is the Arctic hare.

I was able to walk up close the the hare but the fox was at a distance.

The clouds here are amazing. The light and colors change dramatically minute by minute. I find myself drawn to the landscape. fall is here and the colors are an abundance of reds, oranges and yellows.In many ways it feels like home. I didn't expect to view the Arctic's edge from this perspective. There are endless distances, but the colors, textures,  and shapes are extraordinary.

PICTURE TOUR

Here is an arctic caterpillar we found while tree boring.

Here is an old rocket leftover from when this are was part of a military base

The picture above is of the "Arctic Hallway." This area separates the dormitory area from the kitchen, classroom and lab areas. Can you guess why they call it this? (Hint: not because we are on the edge of the arctic.)   The picture next to it is of the kitchen dining area. Audrey, the chef cooks food to keep you warm and tastes delicious. The biscuits are especially good as is the strudel. Do you believe Ms. Gill is eating carbs?

Why would carbohydrates be good for you in this type of environment?

Teachers at work blogging to their students across the United States.

Friday September 26, 2008

It was great talking to all of you on Friday. I'm sorry you couldn't see me but sometimes the the signal just doesn't pick up. I spent yesterday on the ground on my knees and stomach searching for seedlings. We moved from the forest/tundra to the forest area where there were more trees and plenty of of mosses. It was quite difficult to find anything, but we finally find an entire little grouping of seedlings. It was so exciting to find them even though we had to pull them out of the ground for lab work.  We gathered the same data on the seedlings as we did on the trees: height,diameter, condition, and ground foliage. We had to gather a minimum of 50 in our plotted area for a sampling study. I could barely get up from my knees to gather my tools, and then get back down to do the measurements. It is hard, tedious, meticulous work that science researchers have to do to gather data in order to prove their hypothesis. It is also true that scientists need teams of volunteers to do this labor intensive work over a period of weeks, months and even years. The researcher for this study will need four years to attempt to quantify his information and formulate an argument to support his theory.

Tomorrow Saturday is our day off and we will tour Churchill. Lots of pictures to share.

Thursday September 25, 2008

Here are three pictures of plants from the Arctic forest. The first is of wild cranberries which we tasted. They were  on the way to having a bitter sweetness. Next is a white spruce covered in lichen. It is really quite beautiful though most of the tree is dead underneath (or what we called  reduced). The other is blueberry. The colors are extraordinary here. It is really autumn and yet trees don't have leaves turning the way we do at home, but brilliant ground coverings of almost every shade. 

 Though it was colder today, it was very windy. At times, I felt as if I would be blown away. We finished coring our group of trees in the forest and headed out to the forest tundra where we did the same tasks. There were fewer trees there, and more wind to do damage to the trees. The ground is uneven and squishy and there are fewer trees. In the afternoon, we completed these tasks and began to do a search on the ground for seedlings and saplings. in groups of two, we laid out a meter stick and on our knees searched in front of it.  You have to look very carefully, because there is a lot of different ground coverings. If we found either, we did our list of measurements. For a sapling, we then pulled it out of the ground for further analysis in the lab. This is called "destructive sampling". We didn't get very far, and the task  was time consuming. We will continue in the AM on Friday. 

Here is the lake that is next to the tundra where we were working today. The weather kept changing dramatically. We kept expecting rain but ultimately the sun won out. One of the trees we were working on was on a ledge over a huge stand of water. It was difficult to core or even find if the main trunk was a single standing trunk or more because of the tangle of roots, dead branches and underbrush. I must say that the members if my group were tenacious and persisted in their effort until the task was completed. 

It was so exciting to hear from all of you today during our Skype  call. I am trying to answer all your questions.

You can look at the comments or student questions to find some of your answers.

Wednesday September 24, 2008

One of the questions I received was "What is a tundra?" The simple answer is a treeless plain. The word comes from the Finnish (what country is that?) and is the coldest of biomes. There is little precipitation, low biotic diversity, and simple vegetation structure. There is a short season of growth and most energy and nutrients come from dead organic matter. There are two tundra environments: Arctic and Alpine.

Today I continued with my team taking tree samples. We are still in the forest area but have only one tree left for tomorrow and then we move out to the forest-tundra.

Some other students asked if I had seen any animals yet. We did find a lot of this all over the forest site. It is SCAT, or goose pooh. One of my fellow teammates is excited by finding this but is looking for larger deposits, such as polar bear scat. But Carly, our Earthwatch Coordinator says that polar bears don't eat very much this time of year. They're waiting for the ice to come so they can go out on the ice and hunt for seals.  So far though, NO POLAR BEARS HAVE BEEN SIGHTED. 

KEEP WATCHING MY BLOG!

Here are the tree core samples we took from the trees today. When we remove them from the tree borer, we tuck them nice and eat into straws. (Just like those you get from McDonald's) Both ends of the straw are tapped so the piece or pieces don't fall out. Back at the lab, we remove the pieces and put them on cedar strips. After the pieces dry, they will be glued down and sanded. Then the rings will be counted to find the age of the trees and climatic changes. The Earthwatch Team is just collecting the data and not analyzing it.

Think about it. How do scientists go about their work? What do they have to do first? Looking at the information I've given you so far, what is the hypothesis the scientists are trying to prove? Send me your answers.