It's been a great week of PolarTREC Orientation
On Wednesday we went to the University of Alaska at Fairbanks Museum of the North, where we got to hold a hibernating Arctic ground squirrel.
The Museum had interesting native art, like this Statute of Liberty doll.
In remote locations like the Arctic or Antarctic you're sometimes out of range of communication signals we take for granted, so part of our training was to learn how to use satellite phones which work anywhere on earth. At the Toolik Field Station we'll normally have a good internet connection, but some of the PolarTREC teachers will only be able to communicate by sat phone.
Yesterday we went to the PermafrostPermanently frozen ground. Tunnel, which was fascinating. It's drilled into ground that's been frozen since the end of the last Ice Age, from 10,000 - 14,000 years ago, and it's full of the boness of mammoths, steppe bison and horses as well as undecayed plant remains over 10,000 years old.
After the tunnel we went to see the Alaska Pipeline, which I'll be seeing a lot more of on my way to Toolik this summer.
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