First, before describing our first day of data gathering, I managed to upload the video of us driving up to Dechalan Lodge, while literally IN THE RIVER….enjoy!
Okay, so the first day of data collecting! Steve Mamet, the PI (Principal Investigator) of this project, is interested in climate change as a whole, and specifically as it is happening in the sub arctic. There are several ways to measure this (all good science uses several independent measures of data to confirm a hypothesis), and one way is to probe for the depth of permafrost, and compare year after year. This project has been happening since the early 2000’s, so a little over 20 years of data has been gathered. Steve mentioned that he would like 30 years of data overall.
So first thing’s first: permafrost! Defined as 2 or more consecutive years of temperature below 0C (32F) temperatures, regardless of composition of ground (soil, grass, rock, etc), it is most common near the north and south poles, as well as at high elevations.
Picture of permafrost from Wikipedia:
As it turns out, this particular area is full of palsas (pronounced “pulse-ahs), which are mounds of peat which rise because of frost heave underneath the permafrost
Palsa swarm (sounds ominous, eh?) outside the lodge (in fact, it is one we will survey)
Diagram of what is called “frost heave” underneath the permafrost – basically water coming from underground, but because the permafrost hasn’t melted, it “lifts” it up (from Wikipedia, in this case it’s an ice layer instead of permafrost)
Our first data collecting was at the site named Goose Flats (GF) one of several sites we will be doing permafrost probing
At Goose Flats, we will did two things: checked on the weather station that was located there, and then measured the depth of the permafrost. The day started out gorgeous: sunny with high clouds, 18.3C (65F). However, as we walked along the Canol Trail to the turn off marker, we ran into evidence of bear…Grizzlies are out here…
Canol Trail
Bear scat
Bear paw print
Once turning off the Canol, we bushwack a little (700m) to the palsas
We arrived at the site at 10:30am, at an elevation of 1630m (5,348 feet).
First, is the weather station, which Steve and Geoff (long-time researcher who happened to be here when we were, so he tagged along) would download the data from: it takes both pictures of a snow stake, as well as measures the temperature daily. Unfortunately, the weather station was attacked by a bear at some point (apparently this happens all the time), and so partial data, but better than no data
Weather station
Downed snow stake…
While Steve and Geoff were taking care of the weather station, we (6 of us Earthwatch volunteers) were to measure the permafrost depth at various points along 4 lines. Each line had several spots where we were to do the measuring, all marked by stakes
Here is a rough picture of the lines
And here is a picture of one of the stakes – needless to say, sometimes these stakes are easy to find, sometimes they are covered in grass, sometimes the terrain that was previously solid ground is now all under water ☹️
So we went along the D and C lines, and mostly found all the points – some were clearly now underwater; some were buried, but we found them. We used these T-shaped probes that had basically a ruler on it to measure the depth until we hit permafrost
And yeah, sometimes they were hard to pull up out of the peat layer – it often took two of us
Prisca and Sue with probe at D1
Some may ask me, how do you know when you’ve hit permafrost? Between Steve (our leader), and Prisca (a fellow Earthwatcher from the Neatherlands who knows her stuff), I have come up with these general rules.
Permafrost probing:
Push probe in
A. Probe hits something, sounds hollow, rock
B. Probe hits something, it sounds crunchy, and you can push through, seasonal frost or gravel (Albert says this is the funnest!)
C. Probe hits something, stops, sounds solid, and if the probe bends if you keep trying to push it, you’ve hit the permafrost
Sadly, we were only able to find lines C and D. Lines A and B are literally gone (all the markers have sunk into the ground). Climate change…
Done with Goose Flats, time to head back
Once back to the lodge, we inputted the data we collected, had dinner, and then took a quick hike up to the top of the hill behind the lodge, which has a 360 view. My phone just can’t capture how majestic, and quite frankly, how humbling, the landscape is. These pictures were taken at 7:45pm. It literally does not get pitch dark until after midnight here, and I did notice when I woke at 4:40am, it was light out….
Enjoy the pictures!
