10 July, 2001

Tuesday

Gray, cold, windy day. Temperature is well below the normal 45 degrees. It is currently below freezing with the wind chill taken into account. We ventured out to the site this afternoon to do tower transects. I was working on the plant identification and Lety and Michelle were taking soil moisture and thaw depth measurements. These are done on a weekly basis because they have a direct effect on the carbon exchange system.

With the wind blowing we managed to stay out for a few hours and completed enough to keep us busy in the lab. I have started recording the 1998 data onto an excel sheet and will get it into a GIS database with Joe's help.

Other than that it was a slow but steady day today. Hyojung and Spring were in the lab all day as was Glen crunching numbers. Rommel and Joe are tuning up the plane today. Rommel didn't fly today because of the foggy weather.

Michelle and Lety, taking the weekly soil moisture and thaw depth measurements along the tower transects. The soil moisture instrument (on left) has 5, 2inch prongs on the bottom which are placed in the soil. The computer on top records and stores the measurements. Lety (on right) measures thaw depth by pushing the steel rod into the ground till it hits the permafrost layer. She then removes it and measures the depth and uses a voice recorder to store her data till she returnes to the lab.

This is one of 189 transect points around the tower (notice the orange flag). This is the size of the area I am looking at, listing the plant species present. I spend lots of time on my knees! The mini-topography and the soil moisture are also recorded. I am comparing this years, 2001, with data collected in 1998 to see if changes have occured.