It's been a couple of busy weeks!
The cores that we have been harvesting, the soil has been split into 4 sub samples. I have been carry out fresh and dry weights, dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and microbial biomass (MB) on 3 of the sub samples.
Tuesday 3 August 2010
Sunday 1 August 2010
Sunday fun
The soil harvest is done! We completed it yesterday and are now returning to some kind of sanity. Saturday was a bit hard going as there were only five of us working on the last four cores and it was taking ages longer than usual. Luckily for us our knight-in-shining-armour; Fabian happened to pop by on his day off just to help us out. I think we would have been there for a good couple of hours longer if he hadn't shown up. (Obviously our lab, with the cheesy music blaring out and silly dancing scientists, is the place to be!).
Today was our day off so we decided to take a relaxing 8 hour walk to Laporten. OK, the relaxing part was slightly sarcastic, but it was good fun and we saw a lot of amazing wildlife. Laporten, which we call "halfpipe mountains", is the nearby mountain with the large U-shaped glacial valley (that's probably not the technical name for it as I'm translating from Welsh - here's a picture anyway).
We were hoping to find some reindeer antlers but unfortunately we only found a couple of broken pieces. But we did manage to see an adult rough- legged buzzard, an arctic skua (that we got about a meter from before it flew off!), a Ptarmigan, three lemmings (two of which Jenny and I nearly trod on) and a reindeer. Ok, so the reindeer was quite far away but we still was bit of it.
Plus we saw mosquitoes. Numerous.
We climbed one of the Narbens (a hillock of rocks made from glacial till) and climbed to Paddis.
When we got back, Jenny and Dave decided that we were all low on sugar so it was necessary to make very yummy, sugary Swedish cinnamon buns (which I'm allowed to mention in the blog because they are Swedish and awesome).
Anyhow as of Monday we're moving on to or continuing our specialist subjects. My subject will be on lower plants and I have already been identifying many of the different species. In particular I have been studying Hylocomium splendens and will be learning how to calculate retrospective growth analysis from the annual growth of this moss. So that should be interesting. With any luck the others will be writing a little about their subjects too in the near future.
I can't believe there is only one week until we're back at home in the UK - having a proper night time rather than a couple of hours darkness is going to be strange!
Today was our day off so we decided to take a relaxing 8 hour walk to Laporten. OK, the relaxing part was slightly sarcastic, but it was good fun and we saw a lot of amazing wildlife. Laporten, which we call "halfpipe mountains", is the nearby mountain with the large U-shaped glacial valley (that's probably not the technical name for it as I'm translating from Welsh - here's a picture anyway).
We were hoping to find some reindeer antlers but unfortunately we only found a couple of broken pieces. But we did manage to see an adult rough- legged buzzard, an arctic skua (that we got about a meter from before it flew off!), a Ptarmigan, three lemmings (two of which Jenny and I nearly trod on) and a reindeer. Ok, so the reindeer was quite far away but we still was bit of it.
Plus we saw mosquitoes. Numerous.
We climbed one of the Narbens (a hillock of rocks made from glacial till) and climbed to Paddis.
When we got back, Jenny and Dave decided that we were all low on sugar so it was necessary to make very yummy, sugary Swedish cinnamon buns (which I'm allowed to mention in the blog because they are Swedish and awesome).
Anyhow as of Monday we're moving on to or continuing our specialist subjects. My subject will be on lower plants and I have already been identifying many of the different species. In particular I have been studying Hylocomium splendens and will be learning how to calculate retrospective growth analysis from the annual growth of this moss. So that should be interesting. With any luck the others will be writing a little about their subjects too in the near future.
I can't believe there is only one week until we're back at home in the UK - having a proper night time rather than a couple of hours darkness is going to be strange!
Thursday 29 July 2010
The end nigh!
Nearing the end of the soil harvest now - only a couple of days until we finish as we have 10 cores left. Its very sunny outside and we're all starting to get a bit of cabin fever. Thank goodness that there are eight of us working on finishing the cores today (as we have the help of Amy, Jade and Dave), therefore we're aiming to get six done rather than the usual of five a day. We already have 3 done and it's only just lunch time so we're well on the way. Hooray!
Tuesday 27 July 2010
Getting to the root of the problem...
...sorry about the poor word play, it had to be done.
Anyway we have a new recruit joining us! For a week Fabian will be helping us out with the core measurements from the soil harvest. This is much appreciated as Jade and Amy are now frequently disappearing to learn their individual BES specific subjects and the extra help is very useful.
Amy is now assisting Jenny with the Microbial biomass of the soil, which is taking a veeeery long time as something has gone a bit amiss with their method; involving some technical difficulties and the inability to understand strange Swedish machine manuals. But they are soldiering on and making some progress.
Jade has really quickly picked up the technique of stomatal imprinting and doing well. Hopefully Amy and Jade will be able to explain a little more about the techniques they’ve learnt here on the blog soon.
Lyanne is now acting as the production team as she has her trusty camera. So soon we'll have some videos to show of us working away in the labs, in the plots, the rough legged buzzard chicks (that are now massive) and other features of our time here.
Sarah is being the glue that holds everything together by making sure that we are keeping up the standards and not mixing samples and generally making sure that we're not doing anything stupid such as leaving samples lying around.
Matt has now joined us in the lab too, having completed the photosynthesis side of things. He has now taken the baton from Jade and measuring leaf area of each individual tiny, miniscule leaf of the Empectrum. They must both have nerves of steal - it's extremely tricky.
I have been carrying out root, litter and moss sorting duties mainly, which isn't as bad as it sounds as long as the core sample doesn't have too much of any component.
Apart from that there has been much music, singing and dancing to try and keep us all sane after picking out so very many small roots out of soil all day.
Anyway we have a new recruit joining us! For a week Fabian will be helping us out with the core measurements from the soil harvest. This is much appreciated as Jade and Amy are now frequently disappearing to learn their individual BES specific subjects and the extra help is very useful.
Amy is now assisting Jenny with the Microbial biomass of the soil, which is taking a veeeery long time as something has gone a bit amiss with their method; involving some technical difficulties and the inability to understand strange Swedish machine manuals. But they are soldiering on and making some progress.
Jade has really quickly picked up the technique of stomatal imprinting and doing well. Hopefully Amy and Jade will be able to explain a little more about the techniques they’ve learnt here on the blog soon.
Lyanne is now acting as the production team as she has her trusty camera. So soon we'll have some videos to show of us working away in the labs, in the plots, the rough legged buzzard chicks (that are now massive) and other features of our time here.
Sarah is being the glue that holds everything together by making sure that we are keeping up the standards and not mixing samples and generally making sure that we're not doing anything stupid such as leaving samples lying around.
Matt has now joined us in the lab too, having completed the photosynthesis side of things. He has now taken the baton from Jade and measuring leaf area of each individual tiny, miniscule leaf of the Empectrum. They must both have nerves of steal - it's extremely tricky.
I have been carrying out root, litter and moss sorting duties mainly, which isn't as bad as it sounds as long as the core sample doesn't have too much of any component.
Apart from that there has been much music, singing and dancing to try and keep us all sane after picking out so very many small roots out of soil all day.
Sunday 25 July 2010
Nuolja mountain
On our day off we hiked up Nuolja mountain, which is the nearest . It was a brilliant day and we managed to climb to the very top at 1400 meters which was a great achievement (even though we moaned about the steepness quite a bit on the way). We even got to see snow, which was quite novel in the middle of July. Sarah tried to sled on it, which in hindsight probably wasn't the greatest idea in jeans...
The scenery from that height was even more spectacular than usual so I implore you to go and look at some of the many photos we took in the gallery. Hope we're not too tired out for tomorrow's early start!
The scenery from that height was even more spectacular than usual so I implore you to go and look at some of the many photos we took in the gallery. Hope we're not too tired out for tomorrow's early start!
Friday 23 July 2010
Methodology
After a couple of days of practicing and rotating around different jobs, we finally have a stable method!
Once the core has been taken out of the ground we start a rota in which we all sort out the different components of the core. The different jobs include sorting moss in species, sorting plants in species, leaf area of the plants (only with fresh leave), weighing the inorganic layer and dead leaf litter.
Finally we finish with root sorting in which 4 of us pick out roots from four 7g sub samples, for 15 minutes each and then rotate until we have all picked out roots from each sub sample.
This way it means there is no bias towards the speed and amount if roots picked out by a single person!
Overall all is going well and we have been getting through 2-3 cores a day!
Once the core has been taken out of the ground we start a rota in which we all sort out the different components of the core. The different jobs include sorting moss in species, sorting plants in species, leaf area of the plants (only with fresh leave), weighing the inorganic layer and dead leaf litter.
Finally we finish with root sorting in which 4 of us pick out roots from four 7g sub samples, for 15 minutes each and then rotate until we have all picked out roots from each sub sample.
This way it means there is no bias towards the speed and amount if roots picked out by a single person!
Overall all is going well and we have been getting through 2-3 cores a day!
Thursday 22 July 2010
Much more lovely soil!
Finally with a total of 78 or so hours work; the first trial core is finished. Phew! This means that we have now been able to get started with the smaller cores, which will be used for the actual soil harvest project on the UV treated and control plots. The aim of this is to see if the UV treatment has any affect on the community composition and if so how it is affected.
The first of these cores was processed within 3 hours so this method is proving to be much more efficient already. We are still working out a system of separating the various components out so that everyone is involved and capable of carrying out any tasks assigned to them (such as sorting moss into species, plant species, etc).
In addition, BES funding stipulates that as a part of the grant we must each be trained in a specialist topic too. So once all of the 36 soil cores have been taken for the harvest we will be movig on to our individual specialist training. With any luck we'll be finding out what these subjects will be very soon.
And good news: forecast for the weekend is sun!
The first of these cores was processed within 3 hours so this method is proving to be much more efficient already. We are still working out a system of separating the various components out so that everyone is involved and capable of carrying out any tasks assigned to them (such as sorting moss into species, plant species, etc).
In addition, BES funding stipulates that as a part of the grant we must each be trained in a specialist topic too. So once all of the 36 soil cores have been taken for the harvest we will be movig on to our individual specialist training. With any luck we'll be finding out what these subjects will be very soon.
And good news: forecast for the weekend is sun!
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