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

Photo Journal: A Day in the Life of the Nitrogen Fixation Crew

Posted by Katy

As we continue to set up experiments at an incredible pace (we are entering our fourth round of nitrogen fixation assays at all five of our NSF sites, plus our three CEMA sites, truly an impressive feat!), we thought it would be fun to share a typical day in our lives through a photo journal.

Morning
Wake up earlier than you want to and groggily make a bagel. Caffeinate yourself, because you'll probably need it!

Check the weather one last time!

Make sure everything is packed in your truck!

Time to head out!

The Day
Step 1 of our work day is driving to the site. We've already shared some of our driving mishaps, but even for our sites that are off of the highway, driving is a major task. Most of our sites are about two hours away, so we often spend at least four hours a day in the truck. Sometimes we will drive for a few hours and barely see another vehicle. On other days, when we have to drive up Highway 63 (also known as Alberta's most dangerous highway) to reach our sites, we may end up trapped behind huge trucks transporting logs, oil field equipment, and sometimes even buildings.

Sometimes there's traffic...

We make it! Once we arrive, we need to walk out to the bog. This involves anywhere from two to ten minutes of walking through various terrains. At our Crow Lake site, we walk for about ten minutes through some very swampy turf (and under a power line).

Today, we are taking gas samples from a 24-hour incubation that we use to measure rates of nitrogen fixation in the moss that dominates our bogs.

A happy incubation.

Supplies!

Taking gas samples.

After taking our gas samples, dismantling the incubations, and placing our moss samples back in their plots, we head back up the highway to our nearby Mariana Lakes site, a gorgeous peatland complex. We spot some collaborating researchers taking vegetation samples from the plots in the fen!

I have a side project at Mariana studying the influence of molybdenum and phosphorus availability on nitrogen fixation rates. It's been raining pretty heavily at Mariana for a while, and today I find out that my plots are almost entirely underwater.

Since my plots will be out of commission for a while (our incubation method doesn't work super well on entirely waterlogged moss), I take a pile of moss samples from the fen so I could bring them back to the station and carry out an experiment on the lawn. In the process, I manage to step in a hole and completely soak my feet. We try to stay as dry as possible as we walk through waterlogged peatlands by wearing tall, waterproof boots, but every so often a wrong step will leave one of us with a "soaker."

A handful of peat is worth getting wet feet over!

Back at Meanook Biological Research Station...
After returning from the field, we now have a pile of gas samples that need to be analyzed using gas chromatography. With a run time of 10 minutes per sample, and 48 samples per site per experiment, we spend a good portion of our time running the gas chromatograph. Right now, Hope fires up the machine and prepares herself for a long evening of running samples.

After a while, it is definitely time for a GC snack!

Our lab is currently a mess of sample syringes, jars for incubations, and data.

Outside on the lawn, I apply molybdenum and phosphorus treatments to the new moss samples I collected today.

Kitten, the feisty cat who is the true boss of the research station, bravely defends my samples.

With most of today's work done, it's time to get our supplies ready to set up an incubation at another site tomorrow.

And the next day...we will do it all over again! Working as field ecologists in ecosystems that have a very limited growing season means that we do keep quite a rapid pace during the summer. But with a dedicated crew, careful planning, and a sense of humor, we manage to get done everything that we need to and have fun while we do it.

Coming soon: Pictures and more from our helicopter survey of bogs near the Ft McMurray oil sands mining region!