I’m on the final leg of my 25-hour trip home and I’ll be landing in Columbus in less than a few minutes. Coming back to the “real world,” as we jokingly referred to the Lower 48 and home while on the…
In a few short hours I will begin the 25-hour journey home. I'm leaving the Slope and I'm sad. I'm nervous about what it will feel like to drive 65 miles per gallon and being overwhelmed by the…
So I was asked to talk about ITEX in five high school science classes... I was pretty nervous because even though I've been five for five weeks, the longer I'm here, the more I learn that I don't…
Today after we got back from the field, I continued the identifaction and pressing process of the plants I plan to take back to school to share with my students. I had started this a few days ago and…
Slicing Some Lichen
Jeremy and I spent most of the day collecting lichen in the tundra. Lichen is quite possibly my favorite type of organism in the tundra. It is so unique and unlike anything I have ever considered a…
Catkin
Rob is doing an experiment on plant Inflorescences, the flowering parts of a plant that contain reproductive organs like the pistil and stamens. He wants to know if warming affects seed weights.…
The Webinar
It's done. It's finished. I can finally breathe...about the webinar, I mean. We did it...the first PolarTREC bilingual webinar in English and Spanish. Although I translate a lot at school, that's…
At the Whale Bone Arch
Today I did a lot of things... I went out to the field and took a few hundred pictures. I'm kind of like a photojournalist. My biggest job on the team is to document as much as possible in pictures…
Luis Brower
Alaska is full of surprises and I had absolutely no idea of what today would hold. At my PolarTREC orientation, I was told to have no expectations of how things should be, and now I know why. Before…
Polar Bear
Today I got to know Lewis Brower. Lewis is officially the station manager of the Barrow Arctic Research Center (BASC). His job is to oversee all BASC's operations, make sure that everything runs…
The last view of Atqasuk
When we left Atqasuk today for Barrow, it was raining and foggy. Only a few seconds after takeoff from the dirt airstrip, the village disappeared into the clouds below. As usual, I got to thinking on…
Twelve hours in the field, 35 degrees, windy, site teardown, spectrometry, and the NIMS grid! It all made for an interesting day in Atqasuk...I'll write more tomorrow but right now we're trying to…