Day 9

Today started off with Julia and Courtney, from Dartmouth College, talking to us about their work on carbon dioxide emissions over different types of terrains. They are measuring the carbon flux over different types of vegetation and temperature gradients. They use an IRGA (Infrared gas analyzer), a very expensive piece of equipment that we got to try out today, to take their measurements. Julia studies how the different vegetations and soils affect how the soil takes up and releases carbon dioxide. This corresponds to one part of the carbon cycle, which consists of how carbon moves through the air, soil, plants, organisms, and water in ecosystems. With all this in mind, we went out in the field to work with them and take some of these measurements. First we took some samples in areas with shrub vegetation versus grass and herb vegetation. It took my group a little while to be able to identify the shrubs but we were able to find some of the willows that are pretty common around here. Normally shrubs aren’t very tall but without any trees around here, they are the tallest vegetation. My group also took our first atmospheric measurements for our project at this site. Taking our measurements looks a little silly since it involves four probes we have to hold in the air attached by cords to a handheld device that looks a bit like a graphing calculator. We have gotten the process down so I sit in the middle reading the measurements and recording the data into a notebook while the other three stand around me holding all the probes. Hopefully we will get this process down a little faster as we go along. After eating our lunch and being swarmed by mosquitoes again, we headed in the direction of the ice sheet. The road was pretty sandy but after digging and pushing two cars out of the sand we finally made it to the ice. I rode in the Suburban, which was definitely the best car. We didn’t get stuck at all today. The roads here make all the dirt roads around Tucson seem pretty nice. We also had to stop for a little while on the way since we spotted a caribou drinking some water in a pond just off the side of the road. We immediately had to stop and take some pictures. I couldn’t help but think how much it looked like some sort of travel brochure. It was amazing how huge and beautiful the ice was. It was also weird to think we will be standing at the top of that ice in just a little while. We took some more atmospheric samples near the ice. It was really cold there. We measured the temperature at 8 degrees Celsius (46 degrees Fahrenheit) near the ice sheet and 5 degrees Celsius (41 degrees Fahrenheit) on the ice. All the Americans are still having trouble thinking in terms of metric. All the other kids enjoy making fun of us because of this too. We walked on the ice for a while taking pictures and taking some ice samples and atmospheric data. I was pretty cold by the time we finished, but it was at least nice to be able to pull out some of the cold weather clothes I had packed. With dinnertime quickly approaching we all piled back into the cars to head back to Kangerlussuaq. On the way back, Lauritz (a “Greenlandic” student who is actually German) gave us some dried whale to try. It was pretty fishy and the others described it as really bad, fishy beef jerky. I managed to eat my piece without having to spit it out but I don’t think I will be eating much more whale.

            Dinner followed the typical formula of meat in a sauce and some sort of starch. A lot of the dinners have been Danish. After we came back to the school, we did the water chemistry tests on a sample of the ice we had brought back. We quickly discovered it wasn’t as easy as we thought it would be. As we pulled out different probes and tests, we realized we would need some distilled water and glassware. We soon found we do not have either of these things, though. It looks as if we are going to have to come up with some creative solutions in the next few days. Nevertheless we were still able to do the water chemistry tests although we learned that it is probably a good idea to try and finish all your lab tests before eleven o’clock. We started to get a little loopy by the end of our testing. 

At the ice!

Julia working with the IRGA

Taking some measurements on the ice

Team USA and Lauritz