Last Day!

High: 5°C
Low :3°C
Sunrise: 7:19
Sunset: 18:50

Well, this is the last day. The next time you hear form me will be Thursday morning. I had a really great time, but now I am ready to come back to my normal life. I learned so much about science. What I learned the most is how difficult a scientific study can be. I have always wondered why it takes scientists so long to find answers to problems or find cures for disease. Now I know!! There are so many variables that come into play when scientists look at global issues. We have been studying the issues of vegetation growth in certain areas. The problem with coming up with answers is that scientists need to compare their data to other data. But, when they look at data they want to have at least 30yrs of data to compare. When you think about it, this is a lot of work and a very small amount of data compared to the life of the whole world. When we look at the trees, we are looking at a small section of vegetation when compared to all the vegetation in a similar climate. Then, we also need to look at the variables that come into play. We need to look at soil, types of trees, human impact, animal/insect impact, and the growing seasons. So, the two main questions are: Is the Climate Changing?, and What Can I Do To Help? Well, what we have definitely noticed is that we are having longer growing seasons. We are noticing in the arctic that the growing season for many plants is extending. We also need to understand that weather is a cyclical event. We have years when the climate is warmer and we have years when the climate is cooler. The one thing we need to be aware of is that when we have those warmer years we need to be conscious of our impact on the climate. We can speed up or slow down this process with the choices we make. So, the question is what can we do? That is what we need to figure out when I get back. We need to come up with a project in Cudahy that will help the process of climate change. I hope when I get back we can discuss the possibilities to what we can do. Also, any other teachers following the blog can also help come up with ideas. Can we start a project that helps our communities? Can we make a difference? Well, today we started a new task. We started doing some research on soil sampling. We started digging in the soil at different locations. We needed to look at the soil in 10 different locations along the tundra and then 10 locations in the forest. We also needed to dig 1 "pit" in the tundra and 1 "pit" in the forest. The pit needed to be dug down to the permafrost. I have included pictures of the different pits. ( I know I look like a nerd holding the shovel and soil, it was on purpose)When you look at the pictures you should see the different soil horizons. When digging the pits we see Horizon A, Horizon B, and Horizon C. When we dug the pit in the tundra we found that there was 71 cm of organic material. After the 71 cm of organic material we actually made it to the permafrost. It was so cool to dig down and find a layer of frozen material. I actually found the Frozen Tundra ha ha. What was so interesting is that if you dig in the soil in Wisconsin it doesn't get colder it actually gets warmer. The reason would be because of soil decomposition. Up in the Arctic the decomposition of anything is very slow. When we dug down 71cm we were actually looking at material that was hundreds of years old. Cudahy Students: Look up the bold words (one last time). Also, right down some ideas about a project we can start for Cudahy when I return. Finally, watch the video of me digging a hole and talking about the horizon layers. See you soon!!