Today seems like a good day for you to meet the members of the Snowmelt Project team that have included me in their work this summer. They are a great group of people, full of energy and knowledge and happy to share it!
First off, meet Lead PI (principal investigator) Mike Weintraub.
Mike has a Ph.D in Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology, and teaches and conducts research based out of the University of Toledo. Check out his lab website at the EcosystemAn ecological community together with its environment, functioning as a unit. and Ecology Laboratory He is responsible for those of us on this team being here; as he is the Project Leader for the NSF grant that funds the project. Mike interviewed me by phone back in January, and ultimately selected me for this incredible opportunity to be in the Arctic this summer! Besides being a really great scientist, Mike loves to share his knowledge of science, his experiences in the Arctic, and any kind of delicious good food. He is capitalizing on his past years of experience here at Toolik to post a photo-journal blog chronicling the amazing desserts served daily in the dining hall!
Co-PI Matt Wallenstein is working with us at Toolik from Colorado State University in Fort Collins. Matt has been a great help on the plots as we continued set-up and sampling last week. He has special experience in soil sampling and also tussock cutting!
Matt recently returned to Colorado, and you can check out The Wallenstein Lab at CSU Also, keep an eye out on the road for him as he is training for the upcoming Ride the Rockies event in Colorado!
Next up, Anthony Darrouzet-Nardi, or Anthony, for short.
Anthony is a post-doc working with Mike, and has been instrumental in the daily work here at Toolik. Anthony arrived early in the season to coordinate deployment of the snowmelt fabric and get the data collection started for the season. Anthony is also the chief definer of "FOMO", meaning Fear of Missing Out. As in, FOMO got me outside the other morning at 3:00 am to snap the photos of the early light shining on the mountains. Speaking of shine…well, that's a story for another time. Anthony has a great blog I referred to in an earlier post, but here it is again in case you missed it [Anthony's Science Blog] (http://anthony.darrouzet-nardi.net/scienceblog/)
Caroline Melle is also part of the team; she is doing graduate research work at CSU with Dr. Matt. Caroline has been helping me a lot with the lab procedures, and in turn I got to help her out with some of her soil sampling. Here's Caroline "tearing up the tussock", as we say (well, I do, anyway) when preparing to sample in the field.
Caroline recently left to return to Fort Collins and continue working on her thesis research this summer!
Carolyn Livensperger is also a graduate student, newly transferred to CSU. Carolyn is highly skilled on many aspects of the project, but her specialty is phenology. She studies the progress of plants on the plots during the summer growing season. You saw pictures of her phenology work in an earlier journal; here she is setting up the HOBO dataloggers at the site.
Carolyn is kind of an anchor team member this year on the project; she is the one person staying through the entire field season!
Since my arrival here it has been the six of us, but at the moment we are down to three. Other team members will be arriving soon, though, and I'll feature them in their own stories later in the season!
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