Last Day

It is our last morning in Churchill, and we are all packed up to leave. Yesterday, we finished up our data collection in the Black Spruce Forest (don't worry, there will be more to do waiting for the next Earthwatch team) and entered our data and processed our samples back at the lab. Steve calculated our numbers, and we had collected samples of or from over 600 trees!  The distance my team had measured for collecting our point-centered quarters data was over half a kilometer.  After discussing what this data means to the research project (which I will be sharing with you when I return to school tomorrow) we went up to the dome and got one last chance to see the Northern Lights. This was a fitting farewell to the Study Centre and to Churchill. This morning we have been saying our goodbyes and trying to get prepared for the very different lives we will be returning to when we get home, and for trying to put into perspective what we have been doing while we were away. See you all when I get there!

Black Spruce Forest

So those of you at P.17, I know you didn't get a chance to read through my last post with no internet at school today, but I hope you take a few minutes to find a way to check it while you are off the next two days. I will be back at school on Thursday, hopefully, if all my travel plans work out how they should. I will be extremely tired from traveling (I will be awake from around 7:30 am on Wednesday until Thursday night) but I will be very happy to see all of you again and to talk to you about my trip.

Anyway, let me fill you in on a little bit more of what we have been doing the past couple of days. Besides our day off and our tour of Churchill, we have been hard at work collecting data and gather samples of tree cores, seedlings, and saplings. We finished up at Rocket Lake with all of our assigned tasks, and moved on to a new site, the "Black Spruce Forest."  This site looks very different from our last site, with much denser forest, and many more larch and black spruce trees than at Rocket Lake. However, it is still similar in that it has the same three zones: the forest, the forest-tundra ecotone, and the tundra. We collected all of the seedlings and saplings in the forest-tundra and forest, and have moved on to collecting tree cores in the forest. We cored almost 60 trees (2 cores each = almost 120 core samples) before the end of the day, and we will continue tomorrow with taking cores from at least 50 trees in the forest-tundra.  It is going a lot faster since we are now experts at these tasks, and since you are probably familiar with them also, I won't take up any more of your time explaining what we were doing.

Besides working hard to collect data for Steve's research, we also spotted new wildlife on the way to and from the new site. On the way back to the Study Centre, we spotted an arctic fox out in the middle of the fen, probably looking for food in the tall vegetation. Its coat, which changes colors from brown in the summer to white in the winter, was already a creamy white color like the coat of the polar bears that we saw on Saturday. Unfortunately, we were all so tired from a long day working that nobody took a picture and we all just watched it from inside the van as we drove. Today, we also saw some birds that change colors in different seasons. These birds are called ptarmigans, and the first one we saw was still a dark gray color like they usually are in summer, while the other one way almost completely white, like they are in the winter.  We also passed several pieces of scientific equipment that belong to other scientists who are doing their own research in Churchill. It just serves to remind you how important places like Churchill are to studying the climate, and how strongly people believe that it will show the effects of changes to the climate.  Hopefully the work that we are doing this week will help the scientists studying climate change to understand better how the climate is changing, and to put the effects of this changing climate into better perspective.

Arctic Wildlife and Town

I hope everyone enjoyed their weekend. Feel free to take a break somewhere in the middle of this post, because it's a long one from a long couple of days. I've been saving up all weekend to put this together, so sorry about the long wait.

I had all day Saturday off from doing field work, so our group took a Roads and Trails Tour of Churchill. Since we had yet to see a polar bear, or any of the arctic wildlife besides the arctic hare and some birds, we told the tour guide that seeing wildlife was our main focus. He was happy to help us on our quest, and we found the most elusive animal, the polar bear, first.

The first polar bear we saw lives in the Canadian Eskimo Dog foundation. He weighs about one thousand pounds and lives with over 100 sled/working dogs that live outside on chains in a large area down by the Hudson Bay.  The bear and the dogs do not bother or hurt each other, but both could be very dangerous to people, especially strangers, so we could not get very close.

After that, we were driving and looking for more polar bear sightings, and we saw another arctic hare. This time I was able to walk within 5 feet of it before it took off. It only ran about 50 feet at first, but then starting hopping across the field. It's amazing how much more powerful the legs of a wild hare are than Luke's and Lily's. Look at the extension he gets as he jumps.

We got back in our cheese bus (I know it's blue, but a shortbus is a shortbus no matter what color it is) and while driving around a lake to get a look at a tundra swan and her 2 cygnets (young), I spotted a far away white shape on a rocky ridge.  I wasn't sure what it was but I said to the person in front of me that I thought it was a polar bear. She passed on the word to the person in front of her, and he just yelled "POLAR BEAR!" to the whole bus. Needless to say, we all hopped out to take a look, and sure enough it was polar bear number 2 eating his kill up in the rocks.

While we were out looking at the bear, we saw some really cool rocks that looked like they had been sliced into thin strips.  Which of the 3 rock classifications: igneous, metamorphic, or sedimentary, do you think they are? What do you think could cause this to happen in a place like the Arctic?

After that, we saw a flock of snow geese by the side of the road. They took off as soon as we stopped our bus, so we headed into town to look at the polar bear jail.  There is a "control zone" in town to protect the people who live or travel here, and any polar bears that are found in this zone are trapped, taken to the polar bear jail, not fed for a few days, and then airlifted by helicopter to another location in hopes that they don't return to Churchill.  Some bears that keep returning to town and either attack people or destroy people's homes or vehicles are actually killed to try to make sure people are not in danger from them again. This is why it is important to not feed the polar bears, because if you do they will learn to associate people with a meal and will seek them out to get more food, which can be deadly to both people and the bears.

We drove around the other side of the ridge where we had seen the second polar bear. This area is called "Polar Bear Alley" in town because it is next to the old town dump, where the bears used to come scavenge for food in people's garbage. This created a situation where bears were eating things they shouldn't, and being attracted to an area of town they shouldn't be in, so the people of Churchill decided to shut down the town dump, and keep their garbage in an old military airplane hangar where it gets taken out of town by train.  

Anyway, we were driving to Polar Bear Alley when we noticed a red fox checking us out.  He ran to the edge of a nearby rock outcropping, where he watched us from the bushes. Later on, we saw him again on top of the rocks, looking down at our bus.  When we got around the rocks to see the polar bear again, he was still eating, but took the time to look up, check us out, and sniff our scent on the air around him.  Our guide said that even from that far away, the bear could easily smell us and tell what we were. This is why many polar bears love windy days where they can smell potential food from over a mile away.

Next we went down to the beach, where we saw some amazing rocks that looked so different from each other depending on the type of rock and whether they have been facing the wind, tides, and snow for thousands of years or not.  One teacher promised his students that he would jump in the bay (which is about 33 degrees right now) and spent the next 15 minutes waiting for his hands to warm up enough so he could change into dry clothes.

After that, we passed another section of the land owned by the Canadian Eskimo Dog Foundation, where around 100 more dogs are chained up along the road. The dogs all look really beautiful, but they do not look like pets I would feel safe keeping indoors. They ranged from really old dogs, to young pups and even very young pups, all on chains outside. These dogs will all be sold off as working dogs, and most people around here own at least one, while some of the native people rely on them as a major source of transportation as members of sled teams in the winters.

We finally got to town, where we saw several Inukshuk rock sculptures based on Inuit structures traditionally used for both navigating over Arctic lands or memorials for special sites or people, and are now more of a symbol of good luck, safe travels, or friendship.  We visited the Eskimo museum and ate dinner, then returned in time to see the Northern lights again. So now it has been 4 times since I've been here that I've seen the Aurora, and last night was the second best night so far. We could see the lights moving and colors changing as it spread across the sky.

The lights kept us up late, so I will talk more about today and our new work site tomorrow, once we have accomplished more there. Keep up the good comments and questions, and enjoy all the rest of my pictures from the tour here. 

Tiny Tree Hunt and EXTRA CREDIT

Today was a very, very windy day out on the tundra. Look how much this larch tree is bending in the wind (and how the white spruce next to it is not).  We used an anemometer to measure the wind speed. The top speed we measured was around 30 mph, but the weather station recorded gusts at almost 40 mph.  This wind didn't stop us from doing our work today, or from having fun.

After we finished coring 50 adult trees in the forest biome and 50 in the forest-tundra ecotone, we starting doing seedling and sapling collection. This is considering "destructive sampling" which means that we actually remove the seedling or sapling by pulling it out of the ground after we record a bunch of data about it.  We do this so that the researchers can find out data about the age of these seedlings and saplings and how well they are growing, which they can only do for such small trees back at the lab by cutting them up.  Here I am crawling around looking for seedlings...once again.

For those of you who have been following my posts and pictures and want some science credit or EXTRA CREDIT!!! for doing a little research, I have some assignment options for you to choose one of the sites or sights I have seen here at Churchill, and write a little about it so that I can make a bulletin board when I get back using my pictures and those of you who want to help out can have your work posted on there too.  You guys have all weekend and next Tuesday and Wednesday off, then I will be back on Thursday so you can give it to me then, or give it to your teacher or Ms. Wong when you are done with it.

Directions: Choose 1 of the following and write/type up a description of it. Your description should include all of the information I listed, and be at least 8 sentences (or more!) long.

1. Shipwreck: The shipwreck I saw is called the MV Ithaca. Find out what kind of ship it is, how it got to Churchill, when it ran aground here (how long it has been here), why it got shipwrecked here, and what kinds of animals use it as a home now.

2. Plane Crash: The plane crash wreckage I saw is from a plane nicknamed "Miss Piggy." Find out what type of plane Miss Piggy was, when she crashed, why she crashed, where she took off from, what kinds of cargo she hauled (including what type of animal she carried).

3. Fort Churchill Rocket Range: This is what the Churchill Northern Study Centre (where I am staying) used to be. Find out when it was built, who built it, who used it, what it was used for, how long it was used for, and when it shut down. Try to find out why it was built and what type of research was done here, or what types of rockets they launched from here.

4. Churchill Northern Study Centre (yes, Canadians spell it -re): This is the place where I am staying on my expedition. Find out when it was founded, what it is used for, what some of the things the people here do, how far away it is from the town of Churchill, what 3 biomes it is close to, and what National Park nearby is a famous denning site for polar bear mothers and cubs.

Thanks guys! I look forward to reading what you find out, and keep up the good work with the comments! Great questions so far.

Rocket Man and Tree Cores

Today we went back out to Rocket Lake. Our group started out on the tundra collecting data about the trees and shrubs that grew there. I was surprised to see that even though most of the trees were much shorter and farther apart on the tundra, there were some plants that actually grew taller and healthier out on that tundra. Why might that be?

While we were out there, we found an old rocket that was launched by Canadian government scientists who were collecting data about the atmosphere. The building where we are staying, the Churchill Northern Study Center, actually used to be the rocket range (Fort Churchill) where these rockets were built, launched from, and the data they collected was studied before it closed down and was turned into a research facility.  A couple years ago, the research team at the Study Center did a 1-kilometer search for rockets around the Center, and they found 90 different rockets that were left behind.

After finishing in the tundra, we worked back in the forest collecting core samples from trees. I had a lot of fun doing this, especially after I learned that the trees can fill in the holes we make with sap, so it does not do long-term damage to the trees. (some other people had a harder time getting the hang of it) All of the trees in the forest were white spruce, and from the core samples we took the researchers here can collect information about the age of the trees in the forest, their growth rates, and the climate over the years.  They estimate that the trees we are sampling are somewhere between 100 to 250 years old. These trees can only grow a couple of centimeters a year when they are adults, and most of them are between 6 and 10 meters tall. Tomorrow we will be collecting seedlings and saplings from the forest, then taking core samples in the forest-tundra biome.

I still haven't seen any polar bears yet, but other people nearby have, so now we have 2 people with us with shotguns at all times. Hopefully we will see more on our tour on Saturday...a group that took the same tour yesterday saw 3 polar bears, a caribou, and an arctic fox.  Even though I have people looking out for me all the time, I did get some valuable advice on what I should do if I see one.

Field Work in the Rain

Today we went out to one of our data collection sites, "Rocket Lake." It started out as a beautiful day, at almost 50 degrees and sunny. I was in a group with 4 other teachers and we were working on collecting data on trees and plants in the forest, forest-tundra, and tundra zones. We were doing what is called point centered quarters, where we find the nearest seedlings, saplings, and adult trees to different points that have already been set up using GPS coordinates. We started in the forest and my job was crawling around looking for tiny seedlings in between other plants that looked almost exactly the same. Most of the seedlings were less than 2 cm (less than 1 inch) tall. The researchers can use the data we collected to find out how well different plants are going in these biomes, and how fast they are growing, or how fast their growth rate is changing, as the climate changes. When we started out in the forest, we saw lots of trees, but as we moved closer to the tundra, we saw less and less. Even the trees we did find were very short and stunted. Look up a definition for "tundra" and see if you can tell me why you don't think there are any tall trees there.

While we were out on the tundra, it started to rain. It was very windy and with no protection from any trees, it felt almost 20 degrees colder (the wind chill was 29 degrees) .  We tried our best to keep doing our data collection, but as it got dark from the clouds and the rain was blowing across the tundra, it got very difficult to see anything. The teacher who was writing down our data, Mr. Griffith (who teaches in Brooklyn), had to try to cover up under a poncho to keep our paper dry. We finished up our data collection for the day, then went back to the study center to dry off and warm up. (I'm actually in this picture too!!)

Learning the work

This is Steve, the researcher who is leading our team's work. Today he showed us what we are going to be doing for the next 10 days to help gather data for the research project on Climate Change at the Arctic's Edge. Our part mainly involves gathering data about trees, vegetation, and soil in the forest, forest-tundra, and tundra zones at different sites around Churchill. We are going to collect tree cores, which means drilling out samples of the insides of the trees, to study the age, growth rate, and effects of climate on these trees.  We also are taking data on how many seedlings, saplings, and adult trees of different species are growing in different areas. Seedlings are trees that are only a couple of years old, and are less than 15 cm tall. Saplings are 15-200 cm tall, and above 200 cm are considered adult trees. The trees that we mostly see here are white spruce, black spruce, and larch. Today we practiced on white spruces. We also learned to identify a lot of the vegetation that grows in the different areas up here, like willow, rhododendron, fireweed, birch, two types of mosses, lichen, bear berry, buffalo berry, blueberry, and cranberry. You can look up pictures for these on your own, or check out some of mine. 

We took a tour of the area tonight before dinner and we saw someone's sled dogs tied up outside their house, an old shipwreck on the Hudson Bay, and even the wreckage of a plane crash from the 1980s. Tomorrow we go out into the field, so I'll have more information about the data we are collecting and how the climate is affecting the environment here, but don't worry about me and the polar bears until then, because Carly and her shotgun are watching out for me.