Field Work Time!

A doe and her twins visit and eye us slyly from the yard:  we are their new neighbors at the bottom of the hill that angles sharply up to Athabasca University.  Instead of 18-wheelers and rowdy road workers waking us up in the mornings (last year’s motel fun), I found myself this morning moaning about an industrious woodpecker that roused me a tiny bit too early.  Our digs have improved by orders of magnitude.  Athabasca University has again made our arrival so welcoming; and this summer, we hang our hats in a building they own and maintain.  It is nestled among trees and open space and we are making it our own until our season ends this fall.  The kitchen has a commercial gas stove with 6 burners, two fridges, two sinks, two dishwashers, 1 gas oven, and 2 convection ovens.   Need I say more?  We are living in luxury.  A big shout-out to the folks that have been working so hard to make our arrival such a wonderful experience.

Our crew is arriving in two waves this year.  I am here with 5 other folks and we have been fixing things, settling in, and prepping for the summer.  The second wave arrives on Saturday (two days!) and includes not only a seasoned grad student (hey, Julia!), but also our new crew of field techs who will be experiencing bogs for the first time!  Logistically, it is a tricky thing to balance airport runs, maintenance work, site construction, and isolated research tasks, so this year we decided to mix it up with airport runs.  We look forward to the whole crew’s arrival so we can start the summer fun.  Meanwhile, today, a small group of us are heading up to Fort McMurray to set vegetation growth markers, swap out precipitation collectors for the summer and put together a new site.  We hate to leave our cushy digs in Athabasca, but we look forward to squishing through the bogs.  Our first site up is a bog we call Anzac.  It is one of my favorites. 

This is an image of part of our walk to the site, but we have yet to arrive there-- right now I am in the truck and I am happy to report that we just passed a bear – our first bear of the season!  Construction continues on the road to Fort McMurray and bear sightings along this strip are fewer than they used to be as there is a lot more dust and big construction vehicles to deal with. We will have a very busy day tomorrow as we head into the Fort Mac area where the construction is ridiculous and the air is even more dirty, but we look forward to the work and visiting our old bog friends. 

Welcome to Alberta 2015!!!

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/

Better Late Than Never - Synoptic Survey Photos

Posted by Katy

Back in late July, we conducted a synoptic survey of bog sites near the Ft. McMurray oil sands region. How does one do such a thing? With HELICOPTERS! Really. We hired a helicopter for the day and were flown from site to site so we could rapidly collect vegetation samples from a total of twenty sites over the course of two days. Not too shabby.

The survey also granted us the incredible opportunity to see the oil sands region from the sky; both the beauty of Alberta's natural peatlands and the widespread destruction of oil sands mining became apparent from our vantage point.

Our helicopter!

 A selection of some of the intact (and gorgeous) natural areas we spotted from above:

And the devastation of the oil sands operation...

It is hard for me to not feel upset and disturbed by the whole mining operation after seeing it up so close. Oil is energy, but at what cost? Oil from tar sands mining is the most energy-intensive to extract, and requires the destruction of some of the world's most valuable ecosystems. No thanks.

~Katy