30 May 2011 The Arctic Circle!

It was a quiet early morning when we got up and left the cabin for my last time. It was nice to take that last look and think about all of the great things that have happened here in the last six weeks. I have learned so much about Alaska, Denali National Park, the tundra, and the research that is taking place. Dr. Natali and everyone in the crew have been fantastic to me, and I want to thank them all again for taking the time and the interest in teaching me so much.

But we are not finished yet! When we left this morning we drove to Fairbanks and kept on driving north to the Dalton Highway. When we arrived there we kept going north until we came to a sign on the road. This sign indicated that we had reached 66 degrees 33 minutes north latitude, or in other words the Arctic Circle. I have been across the Antarctic Circle many times and have even worked at the South Pole on several occasions, but this was the farthest north for me so far and my first time in the Arctic itself. It was a memorable moment, and very different than what I have experienced and from what I had expected.

When crossing the Antarctic Circle you are generally in an airplane or on a ship because this circle runs around the Antarctic continent and touches the Southern Ocean. You experience vast expanses of ice features with various rock outcrops or dark ocean waters that do not always look inviting. However today I stepped out of my vehicle in a small parking area, after a four-hour drive, and stood quietly as I gazed around at much more vegetation than I would have guessed. At first glance it looked very similar to the tundra and forest areas of Healy and our study site. I even recognized several species of trees and plants that are being studied in our plots back at the experiments.

At that moment I began to see things differently. The two Polar Regions really are different from each other. And because the Antarctic continent is surrounded by waters that separate it from the other landmasses by hundreds of miles, the transition from high temperate zones to sub Antarctic to the South Polar Region is missing. But here you can move continuously from all the zones and see the slight transitions in the look of the land and the plants. There are areas up here where trees no longer grow, but at this latitude that is just beginning to show. The plants will change more as we head north. Wednesday I hope to see that change to a larger degree by landing at the town of Barrow, Alaska and standing on the northern most part of the United States, looking at the Arctic Ocean. I wonder what the tundra will look like there? Will I find the same plants all the way up there? Are there similar plants that inhabit the Antarctic Peninsula? Why?