Flowers and Field

Posted by Kim

I drove by Meanook on my way to the airport this weekend.  I’m not sure why.  I suppose I knew it would only take a few minutes and I wanted to see an old friend and drive down dusty roads.  Through the chained gate I could see all the old buildings, quiet and abandoned.  I could almost hear the laughter and the power tools and see people playing street hockey in the pickup-truck-laden parking lot.  The grass was mowed, and flowers bloomed behind locks and barriers and cameras designed to keep such riff-raff as me out. I was simultaneously happy and sad- but mostly sad.  Time keeps ticking on, and so do we - evolving with the challenges and difficulties that change with the days and years.  

I was heading home from a week of field work.

Our living space this year is better than we could have ever hoped, given our motel experience last year.  We have open space and a beautiful kitchen and it is fairly close to the lab.  I talked a little bit about the house earlier on the blog and I only have good things to say still.  Our crew is also fantastic.  They are a great group of people and there are many stories, but it is about the time of year when folks start thinking about the end, and the big push needed to finish up the work.  Thoughts of home or vacation or anything but field work start creeping in and it is far enough into the work for everyone to really start to get a handle on each other’s personalities (such a variety of I's and E's!) and what makes each other tick and maybe even what buttons to push here and there.  I learned many things, even this week. Kelly, for example, LOVES to pick wild berries. John likes to talk about conspiracy theories with Graham. Agrima is totally into watching Wall-E, but no one else is. Rob carries swim trunks in his field pack. Sharon and I are least likely to be psychopaths.   We all have our quirks, but I think we all like Saskatoon pie.   I was pleasantly aware of how well folks were getting along and how dedicated and good natured everyone is.

I'm proud of our group, and I’ve missed these people.  I’ve missed the bogs and the bugs and the drives, even, in a strange sort of way.  I’ve definitely missed the work.  There is nothing like spending the day tromping around in a bog.  You sort of take it for granted when you are there full time doing it day in and day out, but these visits are good for me to keep my perspective alive.  It was a good week of work for me and I am glad I could go.  

There is much left to do, but I know the crew will have fun doing it and that all is well there in the middle of Alberta.  The flowers are blooming and the grass is cut and the Saskatoons are ubiquitous, ripe, and being picked.  

Good luck, everybody!!

A view of Athabasca

An Athabasca Welcome

The 2014 summer field campaign has begun in earnest.   We bring with us spring, which also is just arriving in this northerly part of Alberta -- the leaves are just beginning to show their greens and the rains are cold.  In some ways it is like we never left, but in so many other ways, it is all new territory.  Meanook remains vacant and is no longer really Meanook.  There isn’t much left, and we still mourn…  the Athabasca Lodge Motel is a far cry from the field station.  We miss it very much, but Athabasca University has adopted us and we have been welcomed with so much enthusiasm.  We are wildly grateful for the space that we now struggle to organize and for the abundance of help and welcoming we’ve received.  A huge thanks goes out especially to Elaine Goth-Birkigt without whom we would be completely floundering.  I cannot express how much we appreciate the efforts that continue to be made on our behalf by Elaine and how welcome we feel here at the University by everyone. 

Our new students are doing a wonderful job, and we are all excited to start the field work.  We made it to all of our sites before the rains set in, and as it eases up tomorrow, we will tackle some heavy water transport of our own.  So far so good.  Bring on the fun and the bugs!     

A Meanook Fall

Aspen in October.  At Meanook.

Posted by:  Kim

The troops are flying back to Canada today for the last trip of the season – they are actually on the plane as I type, after (not surprisingly) a bit of a delay at PHL.  October trips are usually my favorites, but this year, I am holding down the fort.  For me, bending over for long periods of time and carrying heavy equipment through squishy sodden -- yet beautiful -- peat is frowned upon by the powers that be right now.  Sigh.  I’ll miss the bright yellows and oranges of the aspen, larch, and birch swimming in the deep blue of the Alberta skies and I’ll especially miss the camaraderie of good friends doing fieldwork.  I’ll miss the berries and the foraging bears and the wild eagles.  The weather for this trip looks fantastic.  I am sure they will have a great time.

I will also miss, perhaps, my last chance to say goodbye to Meanook.  Our September trip was a busy one, filled with both field work and dismantling nearly 15 years of equipment and memories from a place we've called home for a very long time.  The Meanook Biological Research Station is closing.  We accomplished our field work in September; and then, systematically moved our equipment and tools out of Meanook.  Under the heavy weight of recent budget cuts, the University of Alberta has decided to step away from the field station, with the Department of Biological Sciences breaking ties with us and other external researchers associated with the station.  It has not been a smooth extraction, to say the least. 

Syncrude plant located just north of Fort McMurray. 2013.

Steven Harper, the Prime Minister of Canada since 2006, and the government of Alberta, are no friends to education, arts, the environment, or scientific inquiry.  With a power base in Alberta, Harper is changing the landscape in Canada in ways both metaphorical and literal.  Massive budget cuts have been imposed on countless institutions and researchers on a national level, and scientists have not only been defunded and disbanded, but they have also been actively muzzled.  Alberta, as a lightning rod for this new Conservative party mentality, now functions, along with the whole of Canada, with a bleaker, heavily petroleum based-economy.  Harper and his party actively shunt money now to industry, establish increased subsidies and reduced regulations to oil companies and their ilk, while systematically cutting funding for, and eliminating, jobs and resources to scientists and educators.   Scientists can no longer do their jobs (even if they have them), and continue to be limited in their ability to disseminate real data and information. Meanook, an outpost for scientists near the oil sands region, is closing.  It is not the first research station in Canada to fall under this new reality (far from it), but it is near and dear to us all; and as we struggle to reestablish a new paradigm for our own research needs, we hope we can help keep Meanook functioning in any way we can.  For now, our hands are tied.

Meanook

While we were able to continue our research based out of Meanook this past summer, it will be our last unless something is done and done quickly.  I have spent large chunks, if not all, of my summers at this research station since 2002, and much of our team comes back year after year.  We’ve seen managers and cooks come and go, but through it all, Meanook is home, and a place to not only do science, but it is where we meet up with old friends who have turned into family.  The closing of the Meanook Biological Research Station is not only another jab at making scientific discoveries more difficult in the shadow of the oil sands region, but on a personal note, as researchers and human beings, it breaks our hearts.

We have hope that another entity will pick up the baton and carry it forward, but for now, we are struggling through upheaval and chaos. 

If you have some time, please read about what is happening to our northern Canadian colleagues.  For our research team, the effects are palpable, and for the Earth, it is a disaster buried in the smog.  

A FAR from exhaustive list of links that may be of interest:

http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20121114/climate-change-scientists-global-warming-stephen-harper-canada-skeptics-oil-sands-budget-cuts-muzzling-protests

http://news.sciencemag.org/2009/01/canada-cuts-research-funding

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/05/02/muzzling-science-harper-scientists_n_3201831.html

http://scienceblogs.com/confessions/2013/05/20/the-canadian-war-on-science-a-long-unexaggerated-devastating-chronological-indictment/

MacGyver's Occam's Razor

Posted by:  Kim 

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them” –Albert Einstein

As a rule, I think the training of field ecologists needs to include some creative problem solving instruction.  Thinking outside the box is often required and is an excellent life skill in general.  For us, the 2-3.5 hour drives to our sites with very little available to us once we leave Meanook, encourage both thinking ahead and thinking on the fly…  it is a long drive back if you forget something, or if a problem arises that you must fix on-site.  We have no electricity, very few gas-stations, and a host of unknowns every time we go out.  It is good to be prepared.  For example, I was cleaning out my field pack this morning and the contents include:   rain jacket, rain pants, 2 spare resin tubes, sunscreen, 2 headnets, granola bar, 4 sharpies, 1 pen, 2 pencils, one notebook, duct tape, electrical tape, 2 flathead screwdrivers, 2 nutdrivers, 1 blue Juice multi-tool, 5 zip ties, an adjustable wrench, 1 Loupe on a BIOGEOMON lanyard, a pair of work gloves, a pair of lab gloves, a tape measure, light in the rain matches, chemical hand warmers, a bandanna  1 carabiner knife, one baseball hat, electric fence insulators for both t-posts and tree-posts, nails, a three-way-stop-cock, flagging tape, a crank-wire setter, tissues, 4 band-aids, stretchy medical tape, lip balm, and an orange.   This motley assortment of gear has been getting me through the days.

That said, sometimes you think you are ready for a situation, and you find that you are not.  There are occasions when even in the safety of our lab back at the field station, sometimes the simplest solution is the best solution.  Two days ago, a time-sensitive project involved grinding over 150 very small samples of peat into a fine powder over a very short period of time.  Our fancy $1500 glorified coffee grinder, it turns out, is rebellious and needs 10 minutes of rest for every minute it works.  And to boot, for such small samples, it wasn’t very talented.  Lazy and inefficient, the grinder was a frustration.  We were spinning for solutions.  The mortar and pestles had all burned in the fire two falls ago, there were none in Athabasca, and golf balls and kitchen bowls were too frictionless to do anything useful.  After 6 hours of using blunt ends of hand tools to rub peat through screens overlaying sieves, our arms and hands suffered, but we were making progress.  Unable to continue to grip the knife sharpener we procured from the kitchen, achiness forced new innovations.  Why we didn’t think of it sooner is beyond me, but simply squeezing and rubbing the samples between our gloved fingers and then sifting it through the three layers of screening was the solution we’d been struggling for for days.  Who needs expensive equipment?  Who needs even small hand tools?  All we really needed was ourselves for perfectly homogenized peat powder.  Gloved hands:  $2.50.  Sweat equity:  $0.  Ground moss:  Priceless.

And so while many of our colleagues are based out of labs and run electricity to their sites and go home at the end of the day, Meanook is our summer home, we drive all over creation, we tough it out, and we MacGyver.  That is what we do.  We take pride in knowing we can handle much. We know Home-Depots like the backs of our hands, can drive quads, use chain saws, run pumps, use fire hose and sprayers, navigate mud-slop in 4WD, and safely man power tools.  We are electricians, plumbers, carpenters, lawyers, writers, scientists, students, and we know how to hammer.  We are ecologists. 

Work updates:  Plot layout- complete!  Fertilizations have begun.  Installation of collars, and resin tubes,  and water samplers, and crank wires is all in progress.  Science is happening.   Along the way, flowers are in bloom, and we’ve all seen bears out our fast-moving truck windows.  Most of us have seen moose, coyote, snowshoe hares, sand hill cranes and a host of other wildlife that keep us occupied on our travels.    

The Early Crew

If I didn’t know it was only May 19^th, I would say it is at least mid-June here in Alberta.  A small contingent of our group arrived at Meanook early this year, and we are just driving back from Fort McMurray as I type.  It has been in the upper 70’s near 80 for days, and we were just caught in a very summer-like downpour that came out of nowhere.  The rain felt good.  Sadly, with the heat comes mosquitoes…  the big bomber-type are out and ready to bite through pants and protective long-sleeved shirts.  I clapped one dead, opened up my hands, and it flew away unperturbed and chomp-ready for its next victim… these things are beasts.  Already, myself, Nate, and Cara itch from the buggers, and I fear we are in for it early with the bugs.  Usually, we can count on at least a couple of weeks before the nets come out, so we shall see.  I’m sure it will be a rude welcome on Tuesday for the new members of our team when they show up.

Meanook is ready for them.  Rooms are prepped, and April, the new cook for the summer, has our dietary restrictions noted, and is ready for the considerable challenge.  This will undoubtedly be Meanook’s last year and I’m sure there will be more about that peppered throughout the summer, but for now, it remains a home away from home for me and for a contingent who has been coming here for several  years.  It is at least my 11^th or 12^th summer - I've sort of lost track.  It has been an establishment for our research group since before I can remember and we have accumulated just as much equipment as one would think after so long a time.  It is a nice place to hang your hat and with the Victoria Day holiday here in Canada, it is quiet, but that will change with a blink of an eye with the imminent arrival of several crews.

My last post included much about the birds and so I’ll just finish up on this long day by saying that we saw Northern Shrikes (yes, Shrikes, Kel!!) at EVERY site we visited on this quick trip north.  It was good to see them eyeing us and chatting to their partners.  White throated sparrows sparred with Chippings in feeding flocks rounded out with boreal chickadees and fat robins.  Magpies bobbed from ground to fence and back and ravens are everywhere.  We’ve seen several deer, a coyote, and have been serenaded by the comb-click of boreal chorus frogs.  Thankfully, it is nearly summer for more than just the mosquitoes. 

Safe Travels, crew!  We will see you soon. 

Spring 2012 at Meanook: A Nice Reminder

As we prepare for the field season, everyone is losing their mind.  Seriously losing our minds.  Well, maybe not everyone, but I certainly am.  Not enough time and too much to do.  New projects are a hand-full and people are stressed.  I am stressed.  As I listen to the birds chirp outside my Phoenixville PA window this morning, I am reminded of a pugnacious ruby crowned kinglet that sang his heart out above our heads in the trees at Meanook a few years ago (wichity-witchity-witchity-WHEEEE).  I fished this post out from my personal blog and thought I would share it here.  It reminds me that with all this logistical nightmarrishness leading up to the summer projects, the fieldwork is fun.

Originally Posted May 22, 2012

In the chill of the evening, the passerines are active with the sun still several hands high.  Tennessee Warblers dressed in yellowish green have invaded en masse and flit from tree to tree.  They are mistaking windows for pass-throughs much to the dismay of everyone here at Meanook.  One such warbler, recovering on a pine branch, finally flew off, but only after Kitten made leaps for it, pulling the bough low as if he was the one hanging on for dear life.  Yay, bird!  No doubt Kitten will find a snack elsewhere this evening but the warbler flies free.  White Throated Sparrows are chatting with the Chickadees and the rowdy Ruby Crowned Kinglets, the Blue Jays yell and swoop from low branch to low branch, and the Sapsuckers play percussive wood.  It is a symphony in the bush. 

Spring is arriving here with birds and blooms.  The cherries aren’t quite flowering yet, but they are knocking on that door.  It seems spring is a little early up here as it is also on the east coast.  Last year almost to the day, it snowed 5 inches.  Two days ago I was hot and sweaty looking at a collapsing permafrost mound. 

Our research puts us in what is called the discontinuous permafrost zone.  North of us, the earth is frozen year ‘round.  South of us, the soil thaws completely every summer.  Here, there are pockets of frozen mixed in with the thawed.  This zone is shifting northward and that thaw brings changes to the landscape and changes to the ecosystems.  Fire hastens this advancement, warming the earth as it scorches it with no chance of the peat recovering the cold of the next winter.  Last year was a doozy on the fire-front, and this year, seems like we are in for another.  Right now, 23 fires burn in Alberta with 345 fires since the burning season started this spring.  We drive through smoke on the way to our sites.  That acrid burn in the nose is not unfamiliar to us and puts me on edge.

Tomorrow we head north to the Mariana Lakes region of Alberta where we will spend the day in both bog and fen and hopefully not run into any bears or fire.  The travel allows for some fast truck window viewing, and since arriving, we’ve seen much:  a Bald Eagle, an Osprey, countless waterfowl and shore birds, Sandhill Cranes, Buteos, Falcons, Shrikes, Passerines of all shapes and sizes.  Our feathered friends are here and are welcoming us to Alberta and to spring.  The morning will bring the dawn of a new day and as we walk among the mosses, the birds will sing.

Note:  The above was written 2 days ago… the total fires is now up to 390 as of 10 AM yesterday…   much potential for ignition.   We have only experienced a bit of smoke and smoldering.  So far so good.

NOTE #2....   our sites all made it untinged through the 2012 fire season.  Let's hope for the same in 2013.  We will be hard at work in Alberta in less than a month.