Healy, AK
Elevation: 409m

Life has been moving fast out here in the Healy cabin these last few weeks. The tundra is hitting it's peak growing season so our vegetation protocols have been in full swing. Above-ground biomass is the name of the game here. With all of the work we are putting into measuring carbon, temperature and permafrost thaw the study isn't really fleshed out until it can be paired with some sort of vegetation response - enter our "hell week". 

It's tongue-in-cheek for me as most of my past work has been in some form of botany or forest ecology. Counting plants, measuring plants, picking plants, planting plants, eating plants I've done it all, and so, it was a refreshing and familiar change in pace when we began foliar collection and point framing. 

Foliar collection was a pretty straight protocol. 10 target species, 10 coin envelopes and a set of rules. Our job was to pluck a specific number of leaves from each species to be dried, ground and run through a mass spectrometer. The idea is that there will be a relationship between our artificial warming and the value in the %C and %N content of the leaves over time. 

Point framing, on the other hand, was a beast with the kind of attention to detail I hadn't seen since my time with NEON. A 60 x 60cm PVC frame is strung with 14 pieces of fishing line to create 49 evenly spaced intersections, a thin metal pin is dropped at the intersection and we record the number of times it makes contact with a plant species' leaf, stem or fruit. The idea is that we get a detailed measurement of the above-ground biomass in our plots without any sort of destructive harvest. The kicker is that we have 108 plots. The KO is that the protocol can't be done in heavy winds or rain (cause the pin will touch a biased amount of plants).

The protocol was last done in 2013, before any of the current cabin team had joined the lab, so Elaine trained us up quickly and we hit the ground running. The sooner we were able to punch through all 108 plots the better chance we had of not burning out. To maximize our efforts during ideal conditions our days started as early as 0500 and ended as late at 2200.

As painfully slow as the protocol felt the time went by remarkably fast. The cabin was split into AM and PM crews and Bri, a grad student in the Mack Lab, came early to help us with both protocols while also doing her own research. 

Not too long into the fray, Julia, Dakshina and Erin (technically an REU from UW, I gotcha homie) also from the Mack Lab, joined the growing cabin family. Focus shifted for the Mack folks to complete their own work and life for us continued on. A rainy spell brought some respite from point framing and gave me the chance to catch up on entering data as well as giving the blocks some McLovin' (checking systems) and others a chance to work on their own grad projects.  

It was around this full-capacity-bursting-at-its-seams-how-many-scientists-can-you-fit-into-a-tiny-cabin moment that Ted and his son, Julian, visited us and treated the whole crew to a pizza dinner at the canyon's own Prospector's Pizza. It was baller and it was much appreciated. A warm, salty meal was what I think everyone needed. Fast-forward to now and point framing is done and entered and can move on to be QAQC'd and processed. Life, for at least a couple days, has returned to normal. Well, except for poor Heidi aka Heidenheidi von Rodenheiser. Through a strange, convoluted shit tornado that is communicating with the Park Service, her role in a mapping-of-the-study-site project has become difficult. But that's another story. 

A few assorted updates: 

Upon first meeting Dakshina we learned that we had both worked on Kure, her in Winter 2013 and I in Summer 2015! Words don't really explain well the feeling of meeting a fellow Kurean especially all the way out in interior Alaska. The proud and the few that have worked on that beautiful remote place float somewhere in between close friends and dearest family - we are Ohana. We didn't get to talk much the first time we met but this last week we caught up on all things Kure, work (we are the field techs of our respective labs how crazy is that??) and the value of a life filled with rich curiosity and the never-ending pursuit of the experience. It was a happy and wonderful connection.

In pupper and doggo news. Taiga's puppies have graduated to the psychotic jail-break stage and the two girls, Olive and Otter, have already gone off to their respective homes. The boys: Flash, Flint and Finn will be staying with Mike and Corine's kennel (Finn will be going to Justin). Queen and Fleur reached retirement and were given to a former client of the kennel to live the rest of their days peacefully in upstate New York. I was in the field when the new owners came to take them but I wished I had a chance to say a proper goodbye. Queen and I spent a lot of evenings together talking through the fence and she was my favorite. Ohma's pups have exploded in size as much as she's shrunk! The last of her winter coat has come out leaving behind a lean wolf-dog I hardly recognized. Boom and Osa have gotten so big that they are difficult to pick up. Between their feet, legs and tails they are growing so fast and so disproportionately they remind me of baby giraffes. 

Things in the field keep ticking on. Between the veg protocols, Justin just getting back from his vacation and me on my way out to mine we had just enough overlap to straighten and tighten down the Eddy Tower and the wind turbine and to test our FD (forced diffusion) sensors.

Tomorrow marks the beginning of my week off as well as the FIRST TIME MY PARENTS HAVE EVER VISITED ME DURING A FIELD SEASON!!! I have been planning since I first got the dates I would have off and am hoping that I'm able to show them a trip they'll never forget. They retire at the end of this year and, after all of these years they've worked to provide for my brother and I, I hope to make this the perfect kickoff. Hopefully the weather holds up and that it's blue skies from here on out.

As always, mahalo and with all my love,

Chris

Written to: "Illinois Sky" - Michigan Rattlers