Sunday, 23 July 2012

A long week of lab work is behind us. Our lab, known by the name of "white cabin", is quite small and under normal conditions would hardly qualify for the term "lab". But it is well equipped with everything we need for that part of the analyses we do here. We prepare the soil samples directly in the field for analyses that are done later on in our lab in Kuopio. Mainly this includes making soil extractions, which we freeze in Seida and then transport to Finland.

The main part of this week was taken up by this work and there wasn't much time for anything else. On Friday we were provided with a welcome distraction, when some people, who were driving a very huge tundra vehicle close to our cabin, got stuck in the wet fens in perfect view of our lab. In the picture you can see Sasha, Andrej and Misha, patiently waiting for the vehicle to be pulled out of the mud, hoping for a vehicle ride back to Seida (as it turned out, the vehicle's chains were broken and they had to walk). The whole act of rescuing and repairing the vehicle is still on-going and our usually quiet and secluded Tundra site is getting crowded with workers. Let's see what awaits us when we walk back to our field cabin tomorrow morning.

One short comment about this walk to and from Seida, as we are not sure that we have mentioned it before: It is a 1.5 hour walk on tracks that are only driven by tundra vehicles and the last part leads through tundra without any real paths. This week it has been quite hot with almost 30 degrees every day – who would have thought that in order to experience a decent summer you have to travel to the Russian Arctic! and there is no shade along the way. As we couldn't use our transport vehicle (although it was ordered) at the beginning of the week, we had to carry a lot of the equipment needed for the next week's work, such as several liters of distilled water, food etc. With heavy backpacks, heat and mosquitoes, this walk was pretty tough. Luckily there were blueberries and cloudberries growing along the way, which kept us going.

Due to this, the writers of this post (Richard and Carolina) weren't too sad about spending some more relaxing hours in the lab, instead of heading directly to our main field site for measurements. Still, besides the lab work we are proud to announce that all measurements scheduled for this week took place as planned. A huge thanks goes to Igor, who kept the flux measurements going and only returned from his work with the weather station in the late evening, when masses of mosquitoes and small black flies made it impossible to use the computer (just imagine the amount of insects glued to the notebook's mousepad necessary to stop the cursor from working...).

And as the weeks in the field seem to be too short here we again decided to extend our working days until Sunday and only went back to Seida for Banya and one well deserved day of rest on Sunday evening. Tomorrow morning the Tundra is calling us back for another round of lab analyses as well as the usual measurements.

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Main page of the blog "Vorkuta/ Seida 2012": http://page21.arcticportal.org/blogs/61-vorkuta

Monday, 16 July 2012

Finally, after one week with a lot of work our next post! Last week we managed to finish almost all of our installations and also started first measurements. More about these you can read further down in this post.

Last Tuesday the bad weather gave us the opportunity to finish our new fancy datalogger which we could set up in the field right away on Wednesday.

As is usually the case, this task took much longer than we expected and we stayed at our field site until late evening. Luckily, just when Maija was dreaming about Igor and Carolina was wishing for pancakes, Igor arrived with a box of pancakes and everyone was happy (see picture).



On Thursday our first CH4 and N2O sampling for this field season took place. In this context we would like to provide you with some more details about what we are doing in the field here in Seida:

In our field site we examine three main landscape types: peat plateaus, peat circles (round, unvegetated peat formations) and mineral tundra.

On each of these landform types we compare artificially warmed plots with control plots. The warming is achieved with open top chambers, which increase air temperature by a few degrees, simulating climate warming (see picture). Gas fluxes are measured via static (CH4 and N2O) and dynamic chamber systems (CO2).




After finishing the sampling on Thursday our day wasn't over yet, but we continued with preparation of the samples (transferring them into vials) until the early morning hours. Friday, 8 o'clock sharp, a tired group of scientists met for breakfast and afterwards continued with the first CO2 measurement in the peat circle/ peat plateau sites.













As a large part of the week was still taken up by setting up of our research site, we decided to postpone our weekend by a day and stayed in the field on Saturday to work.


We took soil samples in different depths at all our sites and prepared them for lab analysis on Sunday as well as today. Tomorrow morning we will return to our lovely green field cabin.

A large part of this week will be lab work but we will still try to accomplish every measurement in the field as planned.

Short resume: After more than two weeks in the field we have adapted pretty well. Despite the hard work everyone is fine and getting fitter by the day. The daily walk from the cabin to our main field site, which at first seemed very tough, we perceive now as a more or less relaxing walk. Food is still good, the weather is nice and we are even starting to get used to the mosquitoes.

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Main page of the blog "Vorkuta/ Seida 2012": http://page21.arcticportal.org/blogs/61-vorkuta

Tuesday, 10 July 2012

After a successful Friday – we were able to finish all bridges and install the soil gas and water collectors at the peat circle and peat plateau (see picture) sites - we packed our stuff and started the walk back to Seida, were we had a relaxing weekend with "banja" and enough sleep.

On Saturdays our group is always looking forward to eat some homemade bread, freshly baked by a local woman. It's a small thing which makes the field work more comfortable (see picture).

Sunday afternoon we planned the working tasks for every group member and on Monday morning we went back to the tundra site to continue the preparation of the mineral soil field site. More bridges had to be built and soil gas and water collectors were installed.
The main task for Monday was to install a data logger for moisture and temperature measurement at different soil depths down to 45 centimeters to our mineral tundra site. This included digging a hole next to the flux measurement plots in such a way, that vegetation and soil wouldn't be disturbed too much (see picture). In addition to that we will install a second data logger at a peat circle/peat plateau site this week.

We could manage to finish this task quite late on Monday under let's say "moist conditions" – during digging the holes it started to rain. Due to heavy rainfall all night some of our team members had to abandon their tents and move to the field cabin during the night, which is getting more crowded now. According to the weather forecast this rain is supposed to continue until next weekend. As a result we decided to work "inside" today and prepare e.g. electronic installations for the second soil profile logger, water collectors and, most importantly, the CO2 measurement chamber for the coming gas flux measurements which we are planning to start soon.




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Main page of the blog "Vorkuta/ Seida 2012": http://page21.arcticportal.org/blogs/61-vorkuta

Thursday, 5 July 2012

As promised, today we are sending a picture of our group taken on Tuesday. Meanwhile the soil scientists from Syktyvkar, Sasha and Andrej, have arrived and completed our team for July (not in the picture).

As you can see, the weather during the past days was very nice, sunshine combined with some 25 degrees. For working in the Tundra this was already quite warm, since there is no shade anywhere and of course the mosquitoes were loving it as you can see it on the picture. Almost every member of our team came down with a nice sunburn.

These past few days we continued with the site set-up and also built and installed most of our equipment, like groundwater wells and soil gas and water collectors. The main effort for this week was the task of building the wooden bridges along the flux plots, in order to not disturb the fluxes during gas sampling and to protect the landscape during our multi-year study. This heavy task was carried out by the boys. In this context we owe thanks to our cook Zhenja, who is the most important person in our group, feeding us and thus giving us energy for the heavy work days and the daily walk to our study site. The pancakes we now had as a dessert for the third evening this week certainly work and are keeping us happy.

 

Last night the weather changed and we faced a stormy and rainy day today. Luckily we have a large Finnish army tent, which we put up at our new study site just in time yesterday. Now we are able to store our equipment there and have some shelter during the day. The weather station is already logging, although some adjustments to the program still need to be done – this we will do on the weekend. One day to go till "banja" (Russian sauna) and cold drinks, yeah!

 

 

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Main page of the blog "Vorkuta/ Seida 2012": http://page21.arcticportal.org/blogs/61-vorkuta

 

 

 

 

 

Monday, 2 July 2012

Following Sauna on Friday, the peak moment of Saturday was the arrival of our cook, Zhenja, who will feed us for the following month.

After preparations of the field work on Saturday, our group headed to our field site early Sunday morning. The first half of the seven km walking distance from Seida village to the field site is a forest road, followed by open Tundra. In the field we started cleaning our cosy green field cabin and made some improvements such building shelves there, in order to make it comfortable for the coming months and to create a functional working environment for everybody. In the evening, the male half of our group took up the responsibility of walking back to Seida to meet the cargo train. There, they loaded the goods such as food and timber for field constructions to a special transport vehicle and took it to our field site. The sun was already rising (3 a.m.) when this task was accomplished and we all went to bed tired but satisfied.

Today, Monday, was the first day we spent at our new field site, which is 1.6 kilometres from our field cabin, which we prepared for the coming measurements. This 
included doing some installations, like building up a meteorological station. During this field work (and in fact already during the past few days), the newcomers in the field got acquainted with the millions of local blood sucking little monsters, which in Russian is "Komary").

For tomorrow we promise you a nice picture of our newly built weather station at our field site along with a picture of our group!

 

 

 

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Main page of the blog "Vorkuta/ Seida 2012": http://page21.arcticportal.org/blogs/61-vorkuta