8 August, 1997

Friday, August 8, 1997.

Today was spent removing the cards from the wooden stakes and bagging the insect cards for counting and identifying. After I had the insects bagged and marked, I moved from the Skeet St. trailer (not-heated) to the Dry Lab (heated) where I could work in comfort.

Although I have not yet completed any statistical analysis of the results, it is apparent there are more insects in some parts of the experimental zone.

I made the following notes regarding future studies of this type:

Recommendations:

1.Field count insects at three 24 hour intervals to reduce loss of cards and insects due to weather or other causes. 2.Find a better adhesive, Tanglefoot damages the insects and makes identification difficult. 3.Do not use tape, there appeared to be a reaction between the spray adhesive and the tape adhesive or surface. 4.Standardize height placement of cards above the surface of the tundra. 5.Use gridded cards. 6.Consider the use of pre-marked stakes/pins. 7.Attach the cards with metal-reinforced twist-ties that you get with large garbage bags.

Friday evening I was able to visit a little more with the permafrost people and learned a little about their study of pingos. A pingo is an arctic landform that is a conical hill with a core of clear ice. A big pingo can be as much as 75 meters high and 500 meters across -- it looks a lot like a volcano, even to having a depression in the top. As we were flying into Prudhoe Bay I recall seeing something in distance that looked like a volcano -- I know now it was a pingo.

In the way of bird sightings today, the fishermen reported seeing an American Robin (Turdus migratorius), a rare bird for this area. Karie and Nat report seeing two Harlequin Ducks (histrionicus histrionicus) on the Kuparuk River.