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Seida 2013: Hello mosquitoes!
(Photo: C. Voigt) Arrival day in the fieldSaturday, 6th of July 2013
We safely arrived in Seida last Sunday after a long (and unbelievably hot) train journey. As the only foreigners on the train, people took quite an interest in us and we were accompanied by a farewell committee when we disembarked the train with all our luggage in Seida.
After one day of field preparations in Seida village, we traveled to our field site on Monday by means of a tundra vehicle, which carried all our stuff and equipment, as well as food and water for the next two weeks.
For those of you who haven't read our blog last year: Our field site is located close to the village Seida, about 70km from the city Vorkuta in the Russian Arctic.
(Photo: C. Voigt) Field toiletFrom Seida village our field site can only be reached by vehicle or a 2-3h walk. We spend most of the time in the field, where our green field cabin is our beloved Tundra home. By the end of a week we usually walk to Seida, for some recovery time, doing laundry and to enjoy Banya (Russian Sauna).
Our first week in the field was taken up by some installations and construction work, since this spring our cabin was moved a few kilometers to our new site, which we set up last summer.
So the first task after our arrival in the field was to build a new field toilet, a veranda for the cabin as well as a power line to the generator in order to be able to charge batteries etc. while in the field.
These tasks were accompanied by masses of mosquitoes; doubtless there are more of those around here this summer. And they seem to enjoy and prosper in the 30°C that have apparently followed us from Moscow.
We on the other hand are suffering slightly under the heat and have started to worry about our consumption of drinking water: about half of it is gone already and the next vehicle transport is more than a week ahead. We are planning to take as much water as each of us can carry when we walk back from Seida after the weekend.
(Photo: C. Voigt) MosquitoesIn addition to all the basic work that usually has to be done in the beginning of the field season, we surprisingly managed to finish all measurements planned for the week and thus will walk to Seida tomorrow after breakfast for a rewarding Banya.
In this context many thanks to Igor and Saara from our work group in Kuopio, who traveled to Seida in early June already for some spring campaign measurements and left everything very well prepared. This certainly gave us a smooth start.
More about our scientific work as well as the introduction of the field team will follow in the next blog.
Written by Carolina and Richard