Data Collection in the Plantation!

A day off for workers in America. However we are busy at work in the Canadian north! We started off with clarification of recording our data collection in Excel. Whorls, laterals, Apical terminals (a new rap song beginning?) leading to the BIG QUESTION…

Why are we doing this?

Here is Twitter version of an answer:

The tree line will shift farther north as the climate changes. We are gathering data on seedlings to note test results if trees can survive on the Arctic tundra.

We loaded up with our rain gear, boots and tools and headed back to the plantation to continue the seedling sampling we started yesterday.

Polygonal Peat Plateaus to the right and ponds to the left…on to pursuing the prolific perfect plantation performances despite precipitation.

This time around you could hear “Good, another dead one!” as the teams ventured down the rows on hands, knees and even one blow up knee pad. A light sprinkle ensued just as we were all ready for a warm lunch and we headed back into Carley’s van for our luncheon date. An hour and 15 minutes later as the rain started coming down even harder we gathered umbrellas and headed out to finish the seedling sampling. In teams of three we measured live and dead height, and counted the number of whorls, length of terminals and laterals, if the tree had any terminal buds to indicate growth for next year and finally noted the quality of the needles and any other relevant comments. We ended this task by gathering some data points on our GPS and double checking a few of other groups initial findings (quality control in the field!).

Dr. Kershaw was spending the time problem solving and fixing a weather station that had been down since May and met us back in the classroom. We spent the rest of the afternoon consolidating our data and pictures, checking to make sure they made sense and labeling was consistent.

An evening lecture and discussion on Permafrost ended a great day! Please view the video below for a "Live in the Field" interview!