For a contrast there's the seedlings which are growing nicely.
Well Joe just called, he's back from Toolik so I gotta run!!
Friday, June 1, 2012
May, I mean June
For a contrast there's the seedlings which are growing nicely.
Well Joe just called, he's back from Toolik so I gotta run!!
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Springtime in Alaska!
Dateline: April 8, 2012, Easter Sunday.
This morning Joe got our roadbikes off the ceiling (don't ask), tires pumped, gears ready :-)
He dropped me off at the UAF greenhouse where I will be spending the rest of my life until I die or I get my PhD, and we brought my old beat up Tomassini ("Tomas") in Kaneesha so I could ride home after getting all my work done (consisting of potting up germinants for later identification, plus an exploratory application of gibberellic acid to induce germination in 30 of 397 pots containing what I imagine to be scores and scores of lazy-ass seeds lying dormant under soil that is getting waterlogged and rotten by the day )|:o(
All that was not as fun as riding home this bright and sunny afternoon on miles of clear dry shoulder past piles and piles of old April snow on a road bike [:-)
It is about 45 today which for us is glorious! Riding home from UAF you have to go downhill, a pretty good long descent on a bike, and it's really fun except at my age I get really teary eyes from the wind, causing concern in probably a very small fraction of 1% of passing drivers (Good GOD Harold that woman is in tears, DO something!!):-O So far nobody has said or done anything to express such a far-fetched hope :-D
Anyway, TODAY was the first road ride, and I felt like I had wings! Compared to the mountain bike commute of the past six months [:-|)
I mean it's good and all--the mountain bike commute takes place on local winter trails. Whereas the road bike commute takes place on the shoulder of the road. It's about three miles longer on the road than on winter trails, but entirely worth it, because it's when you know for sure that winter is over |-D
Old sourdough Alaskans are probably used to believing that their winters last eight long months (September to May). Which probably used to be true (;-)
Nowadays it's more like October to April (six).
If you consider that the current winter's snowpack formed around about the middle of October 2011 and won't be 100% gone until probably the middle of April, that makes six.
Chicagoans are used to thinking they have six months of winter. HA! And again, HA! (|-D
It's true Chicago is very windy, I didn't realize how windy until I moved to Fairbanks. Where we live, wind is a pretty rare event. We are hundreds of miles inland from large bodies of water, so storms just don't roll in and wreak havoc in Fairbanks with the same frequency of Chicago, or even Anchorage (:O}
But what's even more wonderful, more glorious, than today's above 40 bikeride, I came home and sat with Joe on our sunny porch, around 5:00ish (sun sets at around NINE PM, dig it, yall!), and presently I heard a FLY buzz past me. A FLY!!! You know that spring is truly here when a winged insect feels sufficient warmth to become active and airborne in Alaska. Today is indeed their resurrection. >8-o
Go Flying insects!!!
HAPPY EASTER!
This morning Joe got our roadbikes off the ceiling (don't ask), tires pumped, gears ready :-)
He dropped me off at the UAF greenhouse where I will be spending the rest of my life until I die or I get my PhD, and we brought my old beat up Tomassini ("Tomas") in Kaneesha so I could ride home after getting all my work done (consisting of potting up germinants for later identification, plus an exploratory application of gibberellic acid to induce germination in 30 of 397 pots containing what I imagine to be scores and scores of lazy-ass seeds lying dormant under soil that is getting waterlogged and rotten by the day )|:o(
All that was not as fun as riding home this bright and sunny afternoon on miles of clear dry shoulder past piles and piles of old April snow on a road bike [:-)
It is about 45 today which for us is glorious! Riding home from UAF you have to go downhill, a pretty good long descent on a bike, and it's really fun except at my age I get really teary eyes from the wind, causing concern in probably a very small fraction of 1% of passing drivers (Good GOD Harold that woman is in tears, DO something!!):-O So far nobody has said or done anything to express such a far-fetched hope :-D
Anyway, TODAY was the first road ride, and I felt like I had wings! Compared to the mountain bike commute of the past six months [:-|)
I mean it's good and all--the mountain bike commute takes place on local winter trails. Whereas the road bike commute takes place on the shoulder of the road. It's about three miles longer on the road than on winter trails, but entirely worth it, because it's when you know for sure that winter is over |-D
Old sourdough Alaskans are probably used to believing that their winters last eight long months (September to May). Which probably used to be true (;-)
Nowadays it's more like October to April (six).
If you consider that the current winter's snowpack formed around about the middle of October 2011 and won't be 100% gone until probably the middle of April, that makes six.
Chicagoans are used to thinking they have six months of winter. HA! And again, HA! (|-D
It's true Chicago is very windy, I didn't realize how windy until I moved to Fairbanks. Where we live, wind is a pretty rare event. We are hundreds of miles inland from large bodies of water, so storms just don't roll in and wreak havoc in Fairbanks with the same frequency of Chicago, or even Anchorage (:O}
But what's even more wonderful, more glorious, than today's above 40 bikeride, I came home and sat with Joe on our sunny porch, around 5:00ish (sun sets at around NINE PM, dig it, yall!), and presently I heard a FLY buzz past me. A FLY!!! You know that spring is truly here when a winged insect feels sufficient warmth to become active and airborne in Alaska. Today is indeed their resurrection. >8-o
Go Flying insects!!!
HAPPY EASTER!
Sunday, March 25, 2012
March Madness!
We hit the ground running after we got back from our trip to Santa Fe/Chicago.
I had signed up for greenhouse space at the UAF greenhouses to begin my germination experiment.
The 70 or so samples I collected last summer were washed into sieves to capture the seeds and exclude rocks and roots, and then poured into 400 little plastic pots all lined up like soldiers whose mission is to test the seedbank (seeds in the soil) of native tundra that has experienced two types of climate-change linked disturbance: wildfire, and ground subsidence caused by melting permafrost (known as thermokarst).
I figure there's a chance the disturbed areas could favor seedling germination compared to intact tundra, which is just so crowded with plants all jockeying under the midnight sun to suck up what nutrients they can. The tundra of the Low Arctic is considered a type of green desert--think of the moors of Wuthering Heights--yet during that brief summer it does a tremendous job storing carbon as the plants capture CO2 from the atmosphere and turn it into roots and shoots. Then the long cold winter sets in, and what has died stays frozen for a long time, accumulating layer after layer like a really disgusting version of a Baskin Robbins ice cream cake made of the partially decomposed remains of carbon-based life. A changing climate can potentially transform this cake into an oozing mess, whose seething surface will then spew all that CO2, along with gobs of stinky methane, into the atmosphere. But life has a way of trying to persist, and along the way, any number of things can happen. One of the things I'm interested to know is if some of this melting is just enough to favor the germination of certain types of seedlings. Why should this make any sense at all, in a world of hotter summers, longer autumns, brutal winters, and earlier springs characterized by stormy weather? One of the things noticed in the last 50 years is that the tundra is beginning to resemble something less like a golf course and more like a vast thicket of bushes. So how come the bushes are winning? The current wisdom focuses on the story of increased nutrients released by the warming soils as the hungry microbes process more and more nutrients all snug and insulated under thicker blankets of snow. This could be very good for the bushes, especially the ones that have made it this far. More bushes trap more snow, which could make the microbes happy to release yet more nutrients--to feed yet more bushes. That's where I come in with my brilliant idea (said rather dryly): the tundra is like a green mat, and the scars formed by the ground subsidence and the fires can act as openings in the mat to let new generations germinate in that warmer, richer environment. And if the babies don't make it, perhaps the bushes just push into those warmer richer pockets and clone their way across the tundra.
That's the hypothesis anyway. Not only will I be testing for babies, I also have a plan for screening for the rise of the clones.
So, without knowing whether I'd be accepted to the PhD program at UAF or not, I plunged into my seedbank germination experiment, committed to watering and surveying the contents of these 400 pots for the next nine weeks. I have seeds from remote parts of Alaska's North Slope that have experienced some dramatic disturbances in recent times: the huge Anaktuvuk River Fire of 2007, and a few lakes near Toolik whose shores have gullied and eroded through the melting of the subsurface ice. What's important is that I need to compare the seedbanks of these disturbed sites to nearby undisturbed tundra, and though I have seeds from a couple of areas in Anaktuvuk that did not burn, I need to sample a couple more undisturbed sites close to the thermokarsted lake shores in order to really be able to test the idea that disturbance favors the bold (seedling, in this case).
(cute lil' seedlings found in pieces of tundra recovering from the Anaktuvuk River Fire during the 2011 vegetation "pluck")
Long story short, I've been acting like I'm already in the program. And then I got my letter of acceptance.
I got in.
I got IN! I'm starting in September.
Me—a PhD student? Is the Universe cool or what? People have begun to call me “Doctor Dee.”
I guess this means I have to walk the walk now. But for now, I'm watering my pots, and have spent the last two weekends working my butt off preparing these pots (with the generous help of my dear husband and our next-door neighbor Helene), followed by a weekend of nonstop partying with Simon, Chris, and their friends and dog mushing clients. I met a really cool Kiwi couple on holiday who fell in love with the Alaska mushing scene and invited Joe and me to come visit them, and two really cool Norwegian gals who are heading to the White Mountains for a six day trip.
(went to ice alaska on friday)
Last night it was square dancing in Ester, followed by beers at the Golden Eagle until 2:30 am. I don't know where all this energy has come from. But I definitely feel things have shifted. For awhile I was feeling like I would never find anything beyond the job at the lab, which pays the bills and is a good learning experience but was not something I intended to do forever. And just as the routine was beginning to get to me, my application came through. So things will be different. I will continue in the lab doing much the same as I do now, but my position will be as an RA and not as staff. The rest of my time will be my own, for doing my work, writing grants, attending classes, etc etc. It reminds me of what it was to be an art student, but with more structure, without sacrificing creativity. I just hope I can find out something cool about tundra seedling recruitment in this changing world, and I hope at the end of it I can say I was happy to be a flea standing on the scientific shoulders of the giants.
As if to illustrate this last point there is a fungus gnat in the living room trying to fly up my nose....
I had signed up for greenhouse space at the UAF greenhouses to begin my germination experiment.
The 70 or so samples I collected last summer were washed into sieves to capture the seeds and exclude rocks and roots, and then poured into 400 little plastic pots all lined up like soldiers whose mission is to test the seedbank (seeds in the soil) of native tundra that has experienced two types of climate-change linked disturbance: wildfire, and ground subsidence caused by melting permafrost (known as thermokarst).
I figure there's a chance the disturbed areas could favor seedling germination compared to intact tundra, which is just so crowded with plants all jockeying under the midnight sun to suck up what nutrients they can. The tundra of the Low Arctic is considered a type of green desert--think of the moors of Wuthering Heights--yet during that brief summer it does a tremendous job storing carbon as the plants capture CO2 from the atmosphere and turn it into roots and shoots. Then the long cold winter sets in, and what has died stays frozen for a long time, accumulating layer after layer like a really disgusting version of a Baskin Robbins ice cream cake made of the partially decomposed remains of carbon-based life. A changing climate can potentially transform this cake into an oozing mess, whose seething surface will then spew all that CO2, along with gobs of stinky methane, into the atmosphere. But life has a way of trying to persist, and along the way, any number of things can happen. One of the things I'm interested to know is if some of this melting is just enough to favor the germination of certain types of seedlings. Why should this make any sense at all, in a world of hotter summers, longer autumns, brutal winters, and earlier springs characterized by stormy weather? One of the things noticed in the last 50 years is that the tundra is beginning to resemble something less like a golf course and more like a vast thicket of bushes. So how come the bushes are winning? The current wisdom focuses on the story of increased nutrients released by the warming soils as the hungry microbes process more and more nutrients all snug and insulated under thicker blankets of snow. This could be very good for the bushes, especially the ones that have made it this far. More bushes trap more snow, which could make the microbes happy to release yet more nutrients--to feed yet more bushes. That's where I come in with my brilliant idea (said rather dryly): the tundra is like a green mat, and the scars formed by the ground subsidence and the fires can act as openings in the mat to let new generations germinate in that warmer, richer environment. And if the babies don't make it, perhaps the bushes just push into those warmer richer pockets and clone their way across the tundra.
That's the hypothesis anyway. Not only will I be testing for babies, I also have a plan for screening for the rise of the clones.
So, without knowing whether I'd be accepted to the PhD program at UAF or not, I plunged into my seedbank germination experiment, committed to watering and surveying the contents of these 400 pots for the next nine weeks. I have seeds from remote parts of Alaska's North Slope that have experienced some dramatic disturbances in recent times: the huge Anaktuvuk River Fire of 2007, and a few lakes near Toolik whose shores have gullied and eroded through the melting of the subsurface ice. What's important is that I need to compare the seedbanks of these disturbed sites to nearby undisturbed tundra, and though I have seeds from a couple of areas in Anaktuvuk that did not burn, I need to sample a couple more undisturbed sites close to the thermokarsted lake shores in order to really be able to test the idea that disturbance favors the bold (seedling, in this case).
(cute lil' seedlings found in pieces of tundra recovering from the Anaktuvuk River Fire during the 2011 vegetation "pluck")
Long story short, I've been acting like I'm already in the program. And then I got my letter of acceptance.
I got in.
I got IN! I'm starting in September.
Me—a PhD student? Is the Universe cool or what? People have begun to call me “Doctor Dee.”
I guess this means I have to walk the walk now. But for now, I'm watering my pots, and have spent the last two weekends working my butt off preparing these pots (with the generous help of my dear husband and our next-door neighbor Helene), followed by a weekend of nonstop partying with Simon, Chris, and their friends and dog mushing clients. I met a really cool Kiwi couple on holiday who fell in love with the Alaska mushing scene and invited Joe and me to come visit them, and two really cool Norwegian gals who are heading to the White Mountains for a six day trip.
(went to ice alaska on friday)
Last night it was square dancing in Ester, followed by beers at the Golden Eagle until 2:30 am. I don't know where all this energy has come from. But I definitely feel things have shifted. For awhile I was feeling like I would never find anything beyond the job at the lab, which pays the bills and is a good learning experience but was not something I intended to do forever. And just as the routine was beginning to get to me, my application came through. So things will be different. I will continue in the lab doing much the same as I do now, but my position will be as an RA and not as staff. The rest of my time will be my own, for doing my work, writing grants, attending classes, etc etc. It reminds me of what it was to be an art student, but with more structure, without sacrificing creativity. I just hope I can find out something cool about tundra seedling recruitment in this changing world, and I hope at the end of it I can say I was happy to be a flea standing on the scientific shoulders of the giants.
As if to illustrate this last point there is a fungus gnat in the living room trying to fly up my nose....
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Sunday, February 12, 2012
February warm up
Last Saturday we stood at the start line of the Yukon Quest to watch 24 teams blast off down the trail to Whitehorse, Yukon. The race typically takes a couple of weeks for the mushers to finish. This is in large part because it is one thousand miles long.
if you want to follow live tracking of Yukon Quest:
http://yukonquest.com/
It was a nice, normal-for-this-time-of-year 10 below at the start of the race. But by midweek it shot up to 30 above in some places, and this weekend we have above zero temperatures overnight.
The snow isn't all melting just yet, but it is nice to be outside. Yesterday walking back from the general store Joe decided to see if he could knock the heavy snow off the power lines along our street. After several tries he just tapped the line with a light chunk of hard snow, and the line, freed of its burden of heavy snow, shot up, leaving the heavier snow to hang in the air for a split second before showering down. The vibration traveled past the pole at the far end and caused the next stretch of cable to vibrate and lose its snow load as well.
Mesmerized, I looked at Joe and said: "if we were a couple of 12 year old kids we would grab our bikes and ride around the whole neighborhood with a video camera looking for more of these to hit!"
As it turns out there was another one at the far end of our road, and I took a shot. After ten tries I hit the line and it shot up, the snow shot down, and I decided we needed to get our bikes and a video camera.
Alas, this was the last one left on our road to film...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxK7Zort3AM
if you want to follow live tracking of Yukon Quest:
http://yukonquest.com/
It was a nice, normal-for-this-time-of-year 10 below at the start of the race. But by midweek it shot up to 30 above in some places, and this weekend we have above zero temperatures overnight.
The snow isn't all melting just yet, but it is nice to be outside. Yesterday walking back from the general store Joe decided to see if he could knock the heavy snow off the power lines along our street. After several tries he just tapped the line with a light chunk of hard snow, and the line, freed of its burden of heavy snow, shot up, leaving the heavier snow to hang in the air for a split second before showering down. The vibration traveled past the pole at the far end and caused the next stretch of cable to vibrate and lose its snow load as well.
Mesmerized, I looked at Joe and said: "if we were a couple of 12 year old kids we would grab our bikes and ride around the whole neighborhood with a video camera looking for more of these to hit!"
As it turns out there was another one at the far end of our road, and I took a shot. After ten tries I hit the line and it shot up, the snow shot down, and I decided we needed to get our bikes and a video camera.
Alas, this was the last one left on our road to film...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxK7Zort3AM
Saturday, January 28, 2012
WARNING: SALTY LANGUAGE FOLLOWS
Holy Balls is it cold out!
This morning it was -54F.
That's colder than Hell.
Colder than a Witch's Tit
Colder than Fuckall.
At -43 propane turns to gel. At -54 it turns over on its side and says: Fuck this. You can go rub two sticks together for all I care. I'm goin back to bed.
Thus, it's too cold to use the propane stove or the water heater. Too cold to cook your food, take a shower, or wash dishes.
It's too cold to go outside because the air is too cold to breathe.
It's so cold the snow is as dry and fine as flour. It's so cold there's no new ice being formed because everything's already frozen. Except for the used kleenex in your pocket--that turns into an iceball.
Although it's not too cold to use the outhouse--when ya gotta go, ya gotta go--it's too cold to wipe your ass. Properly anyway. Better have some baby wipes in the house is all I'm sayin.
It's so cold, everyone that shits in an outhouse will sooner or later comment to their closest friends and relatives that it's almost time to knock their shitspike over.
And what is a shitspike?
It is a stalagmite of feces that has piled up and frozen over the winter, at the bottom of your outhouse.
Day by day the stalagmite grows, because it's too cold to decompose. Eventually someone (usually the man by Alaskan custom) cuts down a stout spruce sapling and strips the branches, making a fine, Friar Tuck-ish staff which he uses to knock the damn thing down. Depending on its height and mass, a falling shitspike can sound like a falling tree, or a bowling alley on league night.
At this point some readers may find this offensive. But trust me, it's too cold right now to be delicate anymore. Cold makes us all a bit more blunt. In my case, maybe a little more than usual.
:-)
It goes without saying it's too cold to drive. Even if you can start your car (with Joe away at Toolik, Simon very kindly came over to charge my battery yesterday so I could get to work) you'd better have somewhere to plug in your car's block heater during the day. By the time I drove home in the evening the ice fog was so thick in our valley at times it was a complete whiteout. I had an invitation to a party last night but I forgot to plug in my car after I got home. By the time I remembered, it had dropped to -46, and I would have needed at least three hours warm-up time to start the engine without harming it. So I did what anyone in my situation would do: I grilled a plate-sized steak and potatoes on the Pig, opened a bottle of wine, and had my dinner.
In other news, this morning's outdoor activities at fifty below consisted of piling 1/4 of a cord of wood on the porch: my heat for the next 4-5 days.
Lest you think it's so bad up here we've lost touch with beauty and poetry, think again. It is a privilege to be a tiny part of all that is Alaska in winter.
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Cabin Fever!
Last Sunday Joe and I were taking a walk to the General Store when we looked up to see---a smoking tree???
Look closer: it's a raven's breath! It was so cold even his CAW! was visible.
In other news, I decide to try micro-bakery:
Oh, c'mon, just try a piece!
BUT I BAKED IT FOR YOU!!!!
I showed it to Simon and he said I should contact the Guiness Book of World Records :)
But, the real reason I did it
Look closer: it's a raven's breath! It was so cold even his CAW! was visible.
In other news, I decide to try micro-bakery:
Oh, c'mon, just try a piece!
BUT I BAKED IT FOR YOU!!!!
I showed it to Simon and he said I should contact the Guiness Book of World Records :)
But, the real reason I did it
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