21 April, 2003

Learning How to Sample

Today in Kotzebue
Today is a little warm. That is not as good for the ice work and it gets harder to drive the snow machines around. We leave on Thursday for ice camp across the Kotzebue Sound (bay), so in order to travel across the ice on snow machine, nice thick ice would definitely be important.

What science is happening?
Lots of science today. We worked with the holes that we drilled yesterday. We pulled up our traps and did three tests.
1.) We put down the CTD diver to test for water Conductivity (how much salt is in the water), Temperature and Depth.

Classroom Connections:
Terry and Melinda Renoylds on our team have lived in Kotzebue for a year and have been taking these samples every two weeks.
1.) Why do you think it is important to take these samples at all seasons of the year?
Do you think it is important to do this for more than one year?
Why or why not?

Reflections

We had our first of five conference calls with Arctic Alive today. Dr.

Lisa Clough talked with students from my class and classes in Alaska and they got a chance to ask questions and talk about our project. If you missed it, transcripts are available for downloading along with teacher and student sheets at the Arctic Alive link below. Having the ability to extend outreach is an important part of the work we are trying to do.

Links

Learn more about our project here
View curriculum for this project, “Ask a Scientist” and learn about other Arctic Real Time research at Arctic Alive
City of Kotzebue Webpage
Listen to the local radio station KOTZ live

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2.) Lisa is dropping a Neskin Bottle to take samples of water from the bottom. This will tell us what organisms live there at this time of year.

3.) Here is Lisa dropping one of the two plankton nets. One collects phytoplankton (plant) this one collects zooplankton (animals).

4.) Here I am doing a mud grab from the bottom. We took 3 grabs and went back to the lab were I sieved the mud and collected the clams, worms and biological material and put in bottles for later examination.

Dr. Lisa Clough and I make a conference call with my class and other classes around the country on the Arctic Alive webpage. We will do 5 sessions that can be downloaded at http://arcticalive.zeroforum.com/zerouser?cmd=login. There are lesson plans and student activities also available.