-41 deg C

SOUTH POLE STATION, ANTARCTICA– The Norwegian-US Traverse, Year 2, Begins! We still haven’t started on our big trip, (the actual traverse), but we are getting closer and closer! This seems amazing given how far we’ve come already. I started my trip early the morning of October 25, first driving to Boston from my home in Vermont, with my husband, Mike. Our wedding was September 27, so we just missed spending our first month anniversary together.

From Boston, I flew first to Newark, then on to Los Angeles, where I spent a couple of hours waiting for my flight to Auckland, New Zealand. This is where things became a little bizarre. First as I was waiting in line to go through security, a very large limo pulled up to the terminal and a whole entourage started piling out. By this time in my trip (which was just the beginning, really), I was already too hungry and tired and homesick to care, and grabbed some food and went to my gate without waiting to see who it was.

As it so happens, the very famous person, hip hop super star Ice Cube was also flying to Auckland, with his entourage. Ice Cube sat in first class, while about 15 members of his entourage were back in coach where I was sitting. They were very, very entertaining for the first few hours of the 13 hour flight, and then thankfully fell asleep. The funniest thing for me is that when I tell people heading to Antarctica that I saw Ice Cube on the plane, everyone first assumes that it’s IceCube, the neutrino telescope that is being run at the South Pole, not the international hip hop/movie star.

In Christchurch, I had a few busy days gathering up the supplies we will need for the traverse, and meeting up with the rest of the group as we were all coming in from all over. There’s Lou, our driller, who flew in from Montana, Tom, the field team leader, who came from Vermont, Glen, coming from Colorado, and the Norwegians, Rune, Svein, Einar and Kjetil, who were coming from Tromso, Norway. The last member of our group to arrive in Christchurch was John, who had to make a last-minute, unexpected detour to Cape Town, South Africa to take care of some business for the Norwegian Polar Institute there. Compared to John’s trip, mine was nothing to complain about. He didn’t even get to see Ice Cube in person.

Tom Neumann, our fearless leader, in line to check in bags for the flight from Christchurch to McMurdo, which we had to do the day before our flight.

In Christchurch, we all worked finding the various odds and ends we would need to find in New Zealand that we hadn’t already shipped, and that we wouldn’t find in Antarctica, including a 5 m ladder, 400 loaves of bread (Norwegians really, really like bread), potholders, a spatula for pancakes, 20 large batteries, and 80 pounds of coffee (most of us really, really like coffee). This at time proved rather amusing, as it meant either Tom or Glen had to drive on the “wrong” side of the road in our rented van, sometimes with oddly sized loads.

This first group of us is participating in the first phase of our traverse from South Pole Station to the Norwegian Antarctic base, Troll. Phase One is to recover the four tracked vehicles we are using, which are currently located 300 km from the South Pole, where we are now. Svein, Kjetil and Rune are the cracker-jack mechanics who will fix two of the vehicles, which are currently non-operational, and replace the differentials (this being the part that broke several time last season) in all of the vehicles. Lou and I are going to drill an ice core while the mechanics do the repairs. The spot where we will be working is called Camp Winter, since that is where everything spent the last season.

Hand drilling an ice core.

After everything is fixed and we are done with our core, we will pack everything up, and head back here to the South Pole where we will unfortunately lose Kjetil and Rune and Glen. Rune’s wife is expecting a baby soon, so it’s important to get him back home to Norway before that happens. The rest of us will head to Troll with another group of researchers meeting us here in December. Then we will begin Phase Two, which is getting from South Pole to the coast, drilling ice cores, taking radar data, and collecting snow samples along the way.

The area we are passing through has not been visited since the 1960’s, and some spots we are covering have never been traveled over before. Our measurements will help determine whether this part of Antarctica is growing in mass (more snow is falling here due to rising temperatures), staying the same, or shrinking in mass.

I was able to spend a couple of hours roaming around Christchurch my last day before leaving for “The Ice,” and so I hit my favorite spots (I had spent quite a lot of time in Christchurch the last time I was in Antarctica). I went to rub Roald Amundsen’s nose at the Canterbury Museum (there is a bust of him there, and it is tradition to rub his nose for good luck), and then spent some time walking around the botanic gardens. I will try to remember what it is like to be warm, to smell flowers, and to be surrounded by color in the next few months. On these trips, I am always amazed by the sensory deprivation I experience.

Roald Amundsen’s bust at the Canterbury Museum, Christchurch, NZ. His nose is shiny from people rubbing it for good luck.

Plants from the botanic gardens in Christchurch…

Plants from the botanic gardens in Christchurch…

…where we all spent our last day roaming around or laying in the grass, enjoying the sun.

After one delayed flight, we left for McMurdo a day later than expected, where we spent another crazy few days gathering, sorting, and packing all the food we would need for the entire trip (phase one and two). This was usually pretty amusing, trying to compromise between Norwegian and American tastes. We are bringing lots and lots of fish, aforementioned bread, rye crackers, brunost (Norwegian “brown cheese” or whey cheese), sardines, some other Norwegian snacks, and luckily a few packages of hot dogs (my request!). The amount of food is mind boggling, as is the amount of toilet paper (about 300 rolls). We won’t have an opportunity to resupply while we are traveling, so it’s important to get it right.

Lou and Einar going for a quick hike up Observation Hill in McMurdo.

The cargo system in McMurdo can be a bear to deal with, meaning that every box is weighed and measured, sometimes multiple times, and entered into the system before it can head out. In addition, we (mostly me) had to keep track of what was going into each box for our own records. The result is that we are very well organized now though, and have sorted the food so that for every week, there are three boxes that contain all our food. We can just grab the boxes and bring them inside the vehicles, and not spend time outside (where we are expecting temperatures around -50deg C in the beginning). That will be worth it in the end.

At the top of Observation Hill is a cross dedicated to members of Scott’s expedition who died on their return trip from the South Pole.

So far, we are all getting along marvelously. Somehow the nine of us, with our diverse backgrounds, all share a similar sense of humor, and work to take care of one another. The Norwegians have been particularly impressed with my skills in the Norwegian language (I had Norwegian roommates in college), even though most of what I remember is a little less than polite. We have all had a lot of experience in the field, and we all enjoy what we do. Who could ask for anything else?

Kjetil and John hiking up Observation Hill, with Mt. Erebus, and active volcano, in the background.

COLVILLE RIVER, ALASKA– Finally, there is time to journal, as we are still relaxing in the “Salix Lounge” (Latin genus for willow). We’ve spent 36 hours watching the river flow backward – upriver. It has granted us time to catch up on some of the scientific literature, so we’ve been discussing the changes underway in North Slope river floodplains. We showed awhile back that encroaching vegetation is stabilizing floodplains and apparently causing the rivers to shift gradually from a braided regime to an anastomosing regime. That is another way of saying that gravel bars are becoming more vegetated, thus stabilizing current channels and often preventing new channel formation. Floodplains are difficult for drawing inferences about climate, because change is a natural process in floodplains, but floodplains are focal points for plant and animal diversity, so are they also often focal points of our discussions.

With the constant north wind, we are now thinking about switching our paddling hours from the middle of the day to the middle of the night, in hopes of catching calmer weather and a bit of mileage downriver.

2:30 AM that night. The raft is parked while we execute a sampling technique called the “pebble count” to understand river morphology.

COLVILLE RIVER, ALASKA– Another day of fieldwork and floating later, we are camped on a big bend in the Colville, across from cliffs and peregrine falcons. Yesterday saw more science, including clear evidence of shrubs colonizing alpine tundra.

As I mentioned during the first trip, because of the lack of large-scale disturbances like fire, the vegetation up here exists in a delicate equilibrium with climate. When large-scale changes in vegetation are observed, as is the case with the repeat photography covering much of northern Alaska, the changes can be attributed to climate. So, after spending years poring over these old and new photo-pairs, it is exciting to be on the ground, actually seeing the multitude of small new shrubs that collectively signify a sweeping change in vegetation.

Today, we diverted from our sampling protocol to execute a small experiment looking at the relationship between alder shrubs – nitrogen fixers – and adjacent birch and willow shrubs. Many times the alder shrubs have rings or “halos” of birch and willow shrubs encircling them. But why?

Our suspicion is that when the alder colonize new areas, they improve growing conditions for birch and willow shrubs in two ways: First, the alders increase the nitrogen content of the surrounding soil during the summer. And second, during the winter the alders drift snow, providing physical protection and warmer ground temperatures in their immediate vicinity.

To test the nutrient-enhancing capability of alder, we sampled leaves of alder at the center of halos, leaves of birch and willow within the halos, and leaves of birch and willow not located in halos. If the birch and willow leaves within the halo are found to have more nitrogen than in the outlying birch and willow shrubs, then we can confirm that nitrogen from the alder shrub is being utilized by birch and willow.

Expanding shrub patches overlooking the Colville River.

Today we awoke to 40? F and no bugs. The freedom from constant harassment was rewarding, even after eight hours of paddling in the rain at that temperature. As we broke camp, rain turned to snow, and we ducked into the group tent for a memorable dinner of fried polenta over mac&cheese with re-hydrated mushrooms, sun-dried tomatoes, garlic, and cheddar. Already the conversations are shifting toward food. The question “What’re we having for dinner?” comes earlier every day.

COLVILLE RIVER, ALASKA– The four-person crew for this second float of the summer is led by Greta Myerchin and myself, both veterans of the first trip (Nimiuktuk/Noatak) and familiar with the science and wilderness protocols. We’re joined by Ben Gaglioti, a graduate student in biology and master of Arctic vegetation, and Ty Spaulding, an undergraduate biology major at University of Alaska Anchorage with an obsession for wolves that is revealed in sprawling tattoos.

Our first sampling site and campsite. Yes, this is actually a river, not a lake, as it sometimes seems.

The new crew quickly became familiar with the sampling protocol, and science is underway in the remote Arctic tundra. We are sampling in locations where old and new photographs of the same landscape show that changes in vegetation have occurred in certain areas, while others are unchanged. Specifically, we are interested in comparing plant, soil, and environmental properties between areas that have changed and those that have not changed. Because we seek to generalize about large parts of the Arctic, we are floating across Arctic Alaska and sampling where this ‘repeat photography’ is available.

After one day of field work, we broke camp in the morning and loaded the raft to head downstream. Besides abundant bird life, we saw a lone bull musk ox on a sandbar and observed him through binoculars before continuing.

At the end of the 11-hour float – on the last corner – we faced the monster of all headwinds and actually had to get out of the boat and “line” the raft downstream against the backward-flowing surface current. “Lining” is where one or two people walk in shallow water, pulling the boat by the bow line, while another person uses a paddle to keep the boat from beaching. The windstorm crescendo-ed as we broke camp in the meager protection of shrubs, and we experienced the strongest summer windstorm of my time in the Arctic (thankfully, from inside our sturdy tents).

Today was a successful science day, and we are all tired. I get the sense, for better or worse, that there will many long days of science, and many long days of boating.

The old photo is from 1949, and the new one is from 2001. Our second campsite is just off the left-hand side of the photo, and we spent several days traversing and studying the facing slope pictured.

NOATAK RIVER, BROOKS RANGE, ALASKA– Yesterday we floated through Noatak Canyon, but not before stopping on several occasions to relocate and rephotograph old Philip Smith photos. I added these excursions partly out of curiosity, but partly to extend the record of vegetation further into the past than the 1940’s photos permitted. The great advantage nowadays is that you can use Google Earth to find the general location of the old photos, saving hours and miles of guesswork in the field. Alas, some stumbling around is still unavoidable, particularly when the landscape has changed so profoundly in the intervening 97 years since the original photos were taken. The most obvious change that we saw upon relocating the old photos is a shift from low-growing alpine vegetation to tall shrubs.

Philip Smith photo from 1911, and my photo from the same location, yesterday.

The last repeated photo was actually a 360 degree panorama, and upon finishing it and reentering the boats, a voice came from the shore. He seemed an apparition at first, with grey pants blending into grey river stones, and a green jacket blending into the shrubs on the bank. We hadn’t seen another person since the bush pilot dropped us 10 days earlier, so we were unaccustomed to hearing any voice outside that of our party. As our brains slowly regained functionality, the obvious question punctuated our collective inner monologue: “Where did this guy come from?”

Ricky sitting in his homemade chair, underneath his guiding light.

Ricky Ashby has a cabin where a clearwater creek enters the Noatak River. It just so happens that the old Philip Smith photo is practically in his backyard, given the broad definition of “backyard” used by those living remotely. He noticed our incompetence at fishing, and directed us to the good fishing hole down near his cabin and the creek. We made our way downriver in the boats, and after about fifty unsuccessful casts, Mark relinquished the pole to Ricky, who landed an Arctic char on his second cast. But not before Greta broke her pole on a stuck lure, so I couldn’t help chuckling at how well we were representing white man ineptitude in the wilderness. Ricky had us for dinner, told us his story, asked of ours, and then we sauna-ed and swam in the river.

It is presently a beautiful and breezy morning on the shores of the Noatak, and with the science now complete, I can relax a bit and enjoy the last couple days of the trip.

NIMIUKTUK RIVER SANDBAR, BROOKS RANGE, ALASKA– Another solid day of sampling and mosquitoes. We are sampling areas documented in repeated photographs over time that show both expanding shrub patches and stagnant shrub patches. The knoll in the comparison photos (in my last dispatch and below) is similar to the one we camped on upstream. Again, at the top, we stumbled upon an ancient cache.

Old and new photos, showing the locations of today’s sampling. The left circled area is an expanding shrub patch; the right is a stagnant one.

All of the good viewpoints in this landscape seem to have considerable evidence of ancient inhabitation. For novice archaeologists such as ourselves, the evidence usually comes in the form of rock piles (caches or cairns), organized rocks, and lush vegetation amidst dry, alpine communities. The rock piles were typically caches for storing food, or cairns for corralling and hunting caribou. The organized stones are usually evidence of old fire circles or tent tie-downs. The lush vegetation indicates fertilization, perhaps resulting from discarded food scraps, campfires, or other human activity. The timelessness of these locations can be quite inspiring.

The science is crystallizing gradually, as our sample size increases and we begin to recognize patterns. The stagnant shrub patches – those that haven’t changed since the 1940’s photos – have been leached of calcareous deposits, and host acidic plant species and large tussocks. On the other hand, the expanding shrub patches are host to non-acidic vegetation, and are devoid of tussocks. This is an exciting preliminary finding, and one that could potentially be extrapolated over large areas, should the lab results agree with our field observations.

Tussocks.

Tussocks, for those who haven’t hiked in this area, look like mannequin heads with afros, and they cover most of the landscape. Balancing heavy loads through fields of afros and clouds of mosquitoes contributes to our deteriorating state over the course of a day. This is remote wilderness science, and it often times progresses at the temporary expense of your sanity. I’m logging-out under another ancient cache and another midnight sun.

The young leaves are eaten in salads or cooked like spinach and frozen to eat in the winter months. The leaves are also chopped and cooked with a base of lard and sugar to make a dessert called ‘Eskimo ice cream’.

Sour dock has a tall inflorescence (stem of flower clusters) of reddish-brown flowers. The long narrow leaves at the base of the plant are gathered, boiled and preserved by the Yup’ik.

The Yup’ik believe the leaves, or the vegetative part, of the sour dock plant are female. In contrast, the inflorescences, or reproductive structures, are male. Our aim was to collect young green leaves: female sour dock.

To do so, we traveled up the Kanektok River with Gloria and Jackie, two students in the class. The Kanektok River flows about ninety miles from its headwaters through the nearby Ahklun Mountains. It joins the Bering Sea at the village of Quinhagak.

Cecilia awaits our put-in in Jackie’s little boat.

Jackie is a native of the village and we were grateful to have her as our guide. Both her and her grandmother collect sour dock along the river in mid-summer.

Sour dock is but one food Jackie and her grandmother gather. Here, king salmon harvested from the Kanektok River dries in the sun beside Jackie’s grandmother’s smokehouse.

Jackie recently cut salmon strips from their smoked fish to eat during the winter months.

Armed with our plastic grocery bags for collecting, we journeyed up the river. We were fortunate to find two places where sour dock was abundant among the riparian vegetation (plants by the river).

Me standing among the riparian vegetation with gathering bag in hand. Tall red sour dock plants in flower are visible in the foreground.

Cecilia and I vigorously collected leaves at the first area until we came upon a very recent (and tremendous!) grizzly bear track. We swiftly joined the other two and convinced them to set out on the river to collect elsewhere.

A Grizzly bear track in the mud along the river bank.

Together, Cecilia and I gathered three overflowing bags of sour dock leaves.

Beautiful Cecilia takes a break from collecting. A tributary of the river is visible in the background.

The typical vegetation of the wetter sites along the river. The yellow flowered plant with rounded leaves is marsh marigold (Caltha palustris).

A bouquet of handsome flowers from the wintergreen plant (Pyrola asarifolia).

NIMIUKTUK RIVER SANDBAR, BROOKS RANGE, ALASKA– If only it were that easy! The pace of this trip has been so rigorous that I’ve hardly managed to journal.

Yesterday we made the strenuous portage from the lake where we were dropped to Seagull Creek, where the boating commenced. We inflated the boats, strapped down the rowing frames, and bounced off obstructions “like a pinball” (Mark’s words) until reaching the Nimiuktuk River several miles later.

By the time we hit “the Nimi,” it was 9pm and we were tired, but the midnight sun again shone brightly and we enjoyed the larger channels and avoidable obstructions. We pulled off the river at 11pm, at the base of the hill we will sample today.

Lisa and Mark ‘lining’ their boat past an obstacle on Seagull Creek

Greta paddling late at night on the Nimiuktuk River.

Our 2nd camp, around midnight.

Panorama taken near the 2nd camp, with our tents barely visible down on the sandbar.

Over the last decade, I’ve been rephotographing landscapes that were first photographed in the late 1940’s. This “repeat photography” has been valuable in helping to understand how vegetation has changed during this century. Normally, in a place where fire is part of the natural system, a change in vegetation over a half-century period would likely be interpreted as vegetation succession between fires. In other words, it could be described as a cyclical change and part of the natural cycle, rather than a directional change.

In the Arctic tundra, however, where fire and other large-scale disturbances are rare, the vegetation is thought to be in relative equilibrium with climate. Thus, a rapid change in vegetation over a large area suggests that whatever is driving the change is of equally short temporal scale and equally large spatial scale. The only force operating on that scale is climate warming, which leads us to believe that it’s responsible for the vegetation changes visible in the repeated photos.

Unfortunately, it’s not quite that simple. The repeated photos show that shrub patches are expanding in some areas, while in other areas shrub patches are stagnant. The goal of this field expedition is to find properties of plants or soils that are different in shrub patches that are expanding, than in shrub patches that are stagnant. That’s why we’re measuring so many different things – we don’t yet know which soil or plant properties will allow us to differentiate between expanding and stagnant shrub patches. Eventually, we would like to identify expanding and stagnant patches across the landscape using diagnostic properties that we measure on this trip, instead of relying on repeat photography.

Old and new photos, showing the locations of today’s sampling. The left circled area is an expanding shrub patch; the right is a stagnant one.

But here’s the thing: Greenland really is green if one comes here at the right time to the right places. The Norse arrived during a particularly warm and green period in human history, an era called the Medieval Climate Optimum between the 8th and 13th centuries. The weather got less cooperative for farming and livestock rearing later during what’s known as the Little Ice Age (from the 16th to the early 19th century) and the Viking settlements in West and East Greenland died out. With recent warming, Greenland may be returning to the days of the early Norse settlers and I’ve read that farmers are growing broccoli in South Greenland. (We’re farther north and I didn’t see any food cultivation, except in window sills and greenhouses.)

A green Greenland.

We came to Kangerlussuaq at the height of summer, our own climate optimum, and found places out of town chockablock with green plants and life bursting at the seams. On the coastal margins, where most of Greenland’s terrestrial ecosystems and all its human communities outside of science camps exist, this Arctic habitat can be dense if not especially diverse. Plants and animals have adapted to their environment in robust ways, including mosquitoes that to our dismay can fly at temperatures approaching freezing, and Arctic Foxes and Hares that are perfectly happy in –40 degree C weather.

But things are changing here and it may become more difficult for Arctic species to adapt and survive. One consequence of climate change is that spring is arriving earlier now than in the past, a trend that can adversely affect iconic Arctic animals such as caribou. We learned about global warming and Arctic ecosystems during a nature hike outside Kanger with Henning Thing, a biologist from Denmark. In the 1970s, Henning came to Greenland to study caribou and more recently as an IPY research facilitator for the Danish Agency for Science, Technology, and Innovation.

Henning Thing.

On our hike, Henning pointed out a tiny, perfectly formed orchid that I did my best to photograph. We also came across a patch of crowberries, a tart black berry used here to flavor beer and delicious to eat straight from the bush (which we did). Henning said the berries were early and especially dense this year, along with other plants that have been budding and flowering two weeks earlier than they have during the past 14 years, when he first started coming to Greenland.

My attempt to photograph the orchid.

The result: a Greenland orchid.

Plants respond to warming temperatures by producing shoots, flowers and fruit earlier in the season. Animals, however, are typically cued by day length rather than temperature so increasingly plant and animal communities are getting out of step with each other. For female caribou, this can become a problem because the timing of their pregnancies and births has evolved to coincide with the first new leaves of spring. If they give birth after the first and most nutritious leaves have come and gone, the mother caribou might not receive enough calories and nutrients to produce rich milk for their calves.

This is just one of the consequences of global warming being actively investigated by biologists, glaciologists, and climate scientists here in Greenland.

The abundant, early crowberries.