I finally got another video up! It has been a little tricky to do this. It gets harder to put video and photos up when there are so many of us on the internet at once. Now you can finally see what tree coring looks like. You have seen pictures of the tree cores once they come out. Here is how I get them out. I took this video yesterday. Who else do you see in the movie?

Dr. Foo Foo was getting a little tired with all of the tree coring we had to do. He decided to relax in a tree.

Then he visited Mr. Mamet. Mr. Mamet was in the forest. He was getting ready to measure out the next area that we would need to core trees in. We were moving from the forest area to the forest/tundra area. It had fewer trees and they were all smaller.

Then Dr. Foo Foo started to get his energy back. He started climbing a tree. I had warned him not to go too high. Look at what happened next. Click on the word "Danger.doc" below. Then hit "open"

Danger.doc

I was so glad that LABMAN was there to save him! I think Dr. Foo Foo learned his lesson.

After we finished our tree coring we had to get information about smaller, younger trees. We had to get on our bellies and look for seedlings. Those are baby trees that have no branches coming off of them. They can be VERY hard to find. We were also looking for saplings. Those are trees that are still young but have branches coming out of their trunks. We did that in the forest/tundra area. This is a photo of Dr. Foo Foo and me in the forest/tundra area. Can you see the difference between that area and the forest area in some of the other photos?

The only sad part of the day was when we realized that we had to pull all of our seedlings and saplings out of the ground to take them to the lab. This is called destructive sampling. These trees will probably die, but it is important that scientists do this to learn more about the trees and how they grow.

I also got to make a satellite phone call today! I spoke with Mrs. F's and Mrs. D's classes at my school. I want to thank the teachers and students! The students had some great questions and the teachers did a wonderful job helping to get this all set up. It was a tricky call. We kept losing our connection. As you can see from the photo, it was extremely windy today, so it was also a bit hard to hear each other. Here is the answer to their last question: We haven't seen any permafrost yet. I am hoping that we get to dig down deep enough to see some one of these days. There are ice formations called ice wedges that we might be able to see. These form when a crack in the earth allows water to seep in and freeze. Later another crack forms in the frozen water and more water seeps in and freezes. The frozen water gets wider and wider and forms a wedge of ice. The wedge of ice pushes up on the land around it causing bumps called polygonal plateaus.

Tomorrow we will look for more seedlings and saplings. It is supposed to be a bit colder but I still don't think we'll see snow.

Tomorrow we will also go LIVE! I am so excited to talk to the students at my school and other schools in Connecticut! We will be able to see each other and chat for a while in the afternoon. I miss the students at Hopewell School so much, and it will be so great to see them again!

See you all then!

Miss Santoro