Science in Greenland: It’s a Girl Thing

During the 2012 IGERT Field Seminar in Greenland, the all-female cohort 3 was introduced to this promotional video, put out by the European Commission as a part of a campaign to inspire more young women to get involved in science.

The controversial video has since been taken off the European Commission campaign website, but not before sparking some lively debate.  The discussion in Greenland amongst cohort 3 about the video and the role of women in science inspired us to make our own version of Science: It’s a girl thing!.

And so we proudly present:  Science in Greenland: It’s a Girl Thing

What do you think about the European Commission video and our take on women in science?  Despite the controversy surrounding the video, the European Commission has a really cool website for their Science: It’s a girl thing!  campaign.  Check it out: 
http://science-girl-thing.eu/en
.

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Tour de Arctic Lakes

Kangerlussuaq is peppered with lakes and ponds, extending all the way up to the ice margin. There are many interesting questions to be answered with regard to these lakes – for example, what are the nutrient inputs? How does the water chemistry vary between each? What is the community composition of aquatic plant and animal life? And how might all of the above parameters be influenced by the surrounding vegetation and geology?

Setting up to take water, sediment, and plankton samples. Photo courtesy C. Vario.

The crew finds sea tomatoes settled all over the lake sediment. Photo courtesy C. Vario.

To get at some of these questions, Ali, Chelsea, Stephanie and I headed into the field one last time before leaving Greenland. Together, we sampled four lakes between the town of Kangerlussuaq and the ice margin. These lakes are especially interesting because of the orange, spherical balls inhabiting them, known locally as sea tomatoes. These fascinating organisms are a species of colonial cyanobacteria belonging to the genus Nostoc. Lakes here are highly variable in their abundances of sea tomatoes, with some having no visible colonies, and others supporting hundreds to thousands of colonies.

High density sea tomato lake.

Sea tomatoes vary in size, with large colonies reaching the size of a softball.

To capture this density gradient, we sampled lakes at four different sea tomato densities, ranging from no visible colonies, to high abundance (estimated to be thousands of colonies). At each lake, we took samples of (1) whole lake water, (2) lake sediment, (3) zooplankton and phytoplankton, and (4) the sea tomatoes.

Steph tosses the plankton net into the lake to capture zooplankton. Photo courtesy C. Vario.

Back in the lab, I hope to use these samples to better understand the occurrence and distribution of sea tomatoes, including: what are some of the limits to sea tomato dispersal? Lakes with few to no visible sea tomatoes are often situated next to lakes teeming with them; what limits their movement and establishment to certain lakes, but not others? Do high versus low sea tomato lakes show differences in water and sediment nutrient levels? Many species of cyanobacteria, including other species of Nostoc, produce toxins, but we don’t yet know whether or to what extent sea tomatoes in these lakes are releasing toxins into the system. Further, examining the zooplankton will allow us to ask additional questions about the movement of the toxins through the food web and more generally, about the composition of these arctic lake communities.

Steph and Jess inspect the fresh plankton net catch. Photo courtesy C. Vario.

Lively zooplankton dart around the sample jar after being caught in the plankton net. Photo courtesy C. Vario.

*Look for updates soon on what we are now learning from these samples!*

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Ecology 101 *from our time in the field*

An interesting part of the field course for me has been learning about topics that are not part of my primary discipline.  While Jess and Chelsea are well versed in the area of ecology Ali, Lee and I are newcomers to the field.  Throughout our week camping we learned a few principles of ecology including the brown and green food webs and biodiversity.  Learning new material while immersed in Greenlandic tundra was an amazing hands-on experience that I’m sure I will never forget.  In the following, I will go into greater detail about the ecology we learned.

Exploring the tundra around camp

The Brown and Green Food Webs

The green food web is the food web that I automatically think of when I hear the term.  It consists of plants and the animals that eat them and makes up about 10% of the total biomass.  Two of the keystone species in Western Greenland are dwarf birch (Betula nana) and the willow (Salix glouca).

Photo of Betula nana

Some of the other species that one frequently sees in the Greenlandic tundra are the blueberry, musk ox, caribou, arctic fox, arctic hairs, and various grasses and sedges.  Another fun species that Matt showed us is the Dryas integrafolia a close relative to the species whose pollen is found in lake cores from the cold Younger, Older, and Oldest Dryas periods.

Photo of Dryas integrafolia

The brown or decomposer food web consists of dead plants and animals and the various organsims that decompose them.  The brown food web makes up the other 90% of total biomass.  The brown food web recycles nutrients and makes them available for the organisms of the green food web to utilize.

Biodiversity of the Arctic

To develop a better understanding of the term biodiversity we set out from camp and hiked up a hill relatively close to the edge of the ice.  Once there, we all spread out and found a one meter by one meter patch of land to exam.  The purpose of our close examination of such a small area was to count as many different types of plants that we could see.  I saw 12 different types of plants in my plot including but not limited to blueberries (Vaccinium uligonosum), dwarf birch (Betula nana), pussy willow (Salix glouca), one mushroom, three flowering plants, two types of lichen and some moss.

Two flowers from my plot

Once everyone had totaled up all the plant life they saw in their plot we gathered back together to compare notes.  The average number of species identified by each person in the group was 11.2.  At this point Matt Ayres told us that he has conducted this same experiment multiple times in the high altitude regions of Costa Rica and the average number of species seen by that group was only 9.4.  What was going on?

Isn’t it true that the tropics have the highest diversity on the planet?  Could the tundra really have more diversity?  The answers to these questions come in learning about alpha and beta diversity.  Alpha diversity is a measure of the average number of species in a given area from multiple plots while beta diversity is a measure of total species found in all of the plots examined.  So while the Greenlandic tundra was higher than the Costa Rican highlands in alpha diversity it is significantly lower in beta diversity; ie. the total number of species present in the Arctic tundra is significantly lower than the  total number of species found in the highlands of Costa Rica.

Jess and Ross examining the species present on the hillside with an awesome view of the ice sheet.

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