(Photo: Carolina Voigt) Soil sampling Thursday 31st July 2014

Today is our last day in the field and we just had our "final meal" – in a way we are looking forward to return to the village, because food reserves are going towards zero, we are even using tea bags twice nowadays ;-)

Other than that, we are fine and finished all our measurements: Gas flux measurements, pore water sampling, active layer measurements and other things that we routinely measure weekly every summer.

Today was the big day for taking soil samples, which took up more or less the whole day, and the evening we are now spending with everyone's most favorite task: picking roots from the soil! From the samples we will later on determine nutrient concentrations as well as active processes controlling the aboveground fluxes of CO2, N2O and CH4, in order to gain a better understanding of carbon and nitrogen cycling in subarctic ecosystems.

(Photo: Carolina Voigt) Packing the cabinAll there's left for today is packing up the site, doing inventory of what is there and setting the soil loggers and weather station up for winter mode.

 

So surprisingly everything went really well during these couple of weeks in the field and we are able to leave even a few days earlier than originally planned, despite the relatively bad weather and lots of rain.

 

For one thing is clear: it is a very cold summer here in subarctic Tundra this year! Syktyvkar, the capital of Komi Republic (in which the Seida site is located) has reported for it to be the coldest summer in 80 years. So, while middle Europe is moaning under the heat, us crazy scientist up here are shivering even in many layers of outdoor gear. But at least the mosquitoes do not seem to mind either cold, wind or rain and are more numerous than ever. It feels as if we used more anti-mosquito spray in the last two weeks than we used in two months last summer... It is always amazing to me how these little buggers manage to be around even in heavy rain.

(Photo: Carolina Voigt) Tundra cabin artSo, by now everything is more or less packed, everyone has traditionally signed their name and some drawings on our cabin walls and we are waiting for the transport vehicle to take us to Seida. There we have ordered some bakeries – bread and homemade "piroshki" – from a local babushka, which will serve as our dinner, probably in combination with some vodka to celebrate the end of a successful field season. And tomorrow, actually serving as this week's highlight before we board the train again, is our weekly Sauna session – desperately anticipated by all of us.

Thanks to all of you for reading our blog and many greetings from the Seida team!

Спасибо и до свидания!