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Road trip! Headed to the #arcticchange conference in Quebec City with a motley crew of #Laurier researchers #laurierresearch #arcticnet #science

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Great day in the office. Doing some #UAV work over the tundra

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A big day in the field (on foot)

Yesterday was our first long day out on foot of the year. We have easily put in 10+ hour days doing snow surveys before the melt began, but now we’ve done one of those days without a ski-doo to carry our tired selves around.

The main project that we’re working on right now is monitoring seven shrub patches and adjacent shrub-free areas to see how frost table (the depth to frozen soil) changes over the transition from spring to summer. We’ve been keeping an eye on a bunch of things – we measured snow depths, and now we’re tracking snow off dates, soil moisture, incoming solar radiation, bud break of shrubs (their shading might affect thaw when leaves come out), and incoming solar radiation. This means that every third day when we have to do these measurements, we’ve got a lot of walking and a lot of measurements to take! It’s also important to note that walking on the tundra is no easy feat – walking on the “flat” parts is a comparable workout to walking up stairs made of sand. Let’s not even talk about walking up hills …

Anyway, we started to get our tundra legs back and got all the measurements done in about 10 hours. We’re starting to see some of the plant life greening up and budding, despite there still being considerable deposits of snow in some areas. It’ll be interesting to see the patterns of how things start to grow in the next couple of weeks!  I’m particularly excited to see things start to flower – unlike Cory who has seen the tundra in full bloom, I have yet to experience that.

We did get some pretty amazing non-plant sightings yesterday. The first part of our day was narrated by an angry swarm of whimbrels that were dive-bombing any raven that flew by. Things got way cooler after that – midway through the day, I spotted a couple of caribou wandering across the tundra! They were pretty far away, so there are no good pictures since I only had the little field camera, but we watched them for quite awhile.  I was surprised to see that they’re still wearing their white winter coats – they stood out like a sore thumb against the tundra right now! At first I thought it was a couple of white ski-doos driving across the snow-free tundra.

On the walk to the next patch I found a small mammalian skull that looked like it had been there awhile. My guess is that it is a siksik, but googling “siksik skull” camp up with some weird stuff so no confirmation on that. Our next cool sighting was a snowy owl that was hunting along the creek! Obviously due to our 24 hour daylight that started a few days ago, these owls have no choice but to hunt in daylight, which makes it great for us to actually see the owls. Just as we were about to make it back inside the bear fence at camp, we had a close call with a more common critter around here – a ptarmigan nearly pooped on me and just about flew right into my head! There was a bit of a show of “who’s the more manly bird” going on and apparently us being there didn’t matter. These birds are ridiculous and about as smart as a rock. They also like to very ungracefully land on tents in the middle of the night – not cool, Ptarmi. The last sighting of the day was a beautiful little fox that found some edibles at our slop bucket drain hole. Our last fox, Monty, hasn’t been seen since we spooked him off with a bear banger. This one seems a little less concerned about the bear bangers, but hopefully if I keep running after it like a lunatic it’ll stay away. It’s very pretty though – a little more compact than Monty, and a really soft greyish orange.

That about wraps up the big day. In other news around camp, it’s been pretty cold and we’ve had some somewhat unpleasant weather – drizzle and freezing rain, and some thick fog at times. This morning there was a little dusting of snow. I brought back my first tundra trophy (caribou/reindeer antler) of the year – we have an antler yard in camp of our findings. We’ve also got water pumping from the creek now, and our sink which formerly drained into a bucket now drains directly to the slop station outside camp (so thankful to not have to haul a full bucket of nasty water across the tundra). I also set up a shower (!!!) in camp – a nice little outhouse shaped tent with propane burner-heated water! Granted, I haven’t used it yet, but a couple others have and the reviews are good. I’m just waiting for a warm enough day that I’ll be warm enough being wet. Tomorrow we sling out the ski-doos from camp, lose one person, and gain one person, keeping our TVC population steady at 5. We’ve started getting into the board games now, playing Settlers of Catan and Coup (both of which I have been dominating at). In other entertainment, the entire camp is playing various versions of Pokemon on emulators which is kind of hilarious. Gotta catch ‘em all, you know!

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A huge Thank You to the great pilots and crew of #Gwich'nHelicopters for all their work this spring field season! Lucas pictured with our Thank You #bubblecopter #GSHeli #TVC (at Inuvik, Northwest Territories)

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Playing around with my Phantom taking some aerial videos of TVC. One short clip of many. Sadly the internet wouldn’t let me upload my full video. Note the 8ft Ft. McPherson tent buried in the snow out back... We had to dig all of that snow out

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Some random pictures from this week

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Some random pictures from this week

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Last week we were testing some of our new UAV instruments with Alex MacLean from the Dept of GES at Laurier. I was also testing some new personal toys, and here is the result. Yes, we do research in the South as well. Enjoy.

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#flat

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The sunset tonight in camp. a short time lapse taken around midnight MST. Every day we are inching closer towards the first day of 24 hour sunlight. Already the twilight keeps its bright enough at night to see clearly. The long days really mess with your internal clock and make getting a good night sleep difficult, with the latter requiring either a sleeping mask or a sock (preferably a clean one).

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Well, this is one of my first posts on this site. I have a fair amount of time on my hands waiting for the snow to melt, and I’ve decided that I’d rather post here than socialize with the 5 others stranded in the weatherhaven (sarcasm). This internet thing is a curse! The concept of connection to the outside world is nice, but it takes away from the remote feel of being up here. Although I must say it has come in quite handy so far with troubleshooting equipment, updating software, contacting the boss, downloading Game of Thrones...... I guess you could say its been both a blessing and a curse- just like almost everything else up here. 

 I have a large amount of pictures from over the years, but Im trying to start fresh and post relevant and new stuff for those people who have creeped my Facebook. I have been trying to refrain from flooding the main camp blog (and the numerous other social media sites that I cant seem to get away from) with personal stuff, so I think Ill leave some of it here. 

Research has gone quite well to this point, even with the super early snowmelt and a large amount of camp maintenance to be done. Our historic end of winter snow surveys went well and were crossed off the checklist by Phil Mann and myself in a couple of hard-spent days. We were also able to do multiple wonderful (and intensive) days of snow surveys across Siksik Creek basin, giving us the best possible estimate of snow water equivalent. In conjunction I have been able to get numerous UAS flights in with three different cameras. This gives us some options for finding the best possible scenario to map snow depths. 

The data is already beginning to stack up. I have about a weeks worth of UAS flights with an average of about 4 flight per day. I have begun to quickly process the data and would like to have it done before returning to Laurier. Theses files are adding up quickly, with over 70 Gigabytes of preprocessed data currently queued for full processing. Thank goodness for technology. 

The snowpack is pretty wet at the moment, and nearly isothermal at 0c. It will likely only take one more sunny day above 0c to cause some runoff. I am ready for that day to come, preferably sooner than later too. We have has some cool and foggy weather which has slowed down the melt rates, but with a forecast constantly calling for rain I have been on the edge of my seat. Rain on snow is just another variable to measure... just another complication. Nonetheless my weir is ready(ish), my loggers are installed, snow surveys complete, UAS flights ongoing, isotope bottles filled, and stilling well..... dry.

Bring on the melt! 

B

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The first post! Welcome everyone. It seems quite strange to have internet up here in camp, located 50 kilometers north of the nearest settlement (Inuvik). But seeing as we have a strong connection to the outside world we figured we would use this opportunity to share some of our ongoing research and camp experiences. This is our way of sharing our adventure with the rest of you, so thank you for visiting. The above picture gives a quick glimpse into our research group from Wilfrid Laurier University (Waterloo, Ontario). We have travelled over 4000 km “as the crow flies” to study the complex and interesting snow hydrology of Canada’s Western Arctic which are being dramatically impacted by a changing climate. 

In the picture above we see out spring snow hydro team led by Dr. Philip Marsh (not shown) from WLU. Currently in camp we have (from top left) Tyler de Jong (research associate), Aaron Thompson (PhD at UW), Philip Mann (MSc), Branden Walker (MSc), and Ally Toure. T (post doc.). We will give a brief intro to each of our researchers over the next few days. We will attempt to provide as much scientific information as possible, but we would also like to keep it light and comical to share what camp life is like. 

Stay tuned! 

B

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Haha once you get up here you won't need any of that gear, being swim shorts and tank tops :p

Trying on all my gear to see how well it works together. Spandex, polyester and merino wool are awesome fabrics for a base layer I find. The boots are rated to -100°C. Staying warm, especially on a snowmobile during long trips is vital, and it’s important to have the confidence that you are prepared for whatever situation arises. Last year I brought many things on a daily basis during expeditions that  I rarely or never used, such as a rain coat and pants, bear spray, GPS devices but when they are needed it is exceptional to have these resources available, as that’s when they become the most valuable.