5 April 2013 First Friday at the Field Site

Journal

Thermometer — Morning temperature at the field cabin.

Sunrise from Menkent Rd. Healy, AK. field cabin.

9 a.m. Elizabeth invited me to sit in on their weekly lab meeting via Skype. Ted Schuur head of the Schuur Lab at the University of Florida is the Principal Investigator (PI) for the CiPEHR Site. He conducts an informal meeting once a week with the members of his laboratory (to include Elizabeth Webb the researcher I’m working with). Laboratory members discuss research, share ideas, organize research and make future plans during this time. Elizabeth and John had spent some time the previous morning preparing to sample carbon from the CiPEHR to have it radiocarbon dated. This sample collection has to occur in the absence of wind to prevent contamination. It’s windy out so…no sampling.

Morning Work — Elizabeth and John work on building a means with which to trap carbon for radiocarbon testing.

John and I head to Fairbanks to rent some skis for John (he’s never been Nordic skiing). As an alumni of University of Alaska-Fairbanks I can rent them fairly inexpensively from the campus Outdoor Activities.

Wood Center University of Alaska Fairbanks Campus — Location of Outdoor Adventures at Wood Center, University of Alaska Fairbanks campus.

In the evening we head out to the CiPEHR site. We need to measure snow depth at the fences in preparation for shoveling next week. The snow that accumulates on the north side of the fences needs to be removed prior to melt (spring) to match the control side. Otherwise the increased snow introduces variables to the year around soil warming experiment.