Ruth and Jess migrate south!

Southern migration.

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After four days of bouncing through airport terminals, Ruth, myself, and the members of the LTER soils team (http://www.mcmlter.org/) have come to our southernmost Antarctic destination at last!

Now, truly seasoned travelers (i.e., polar scientists…and Arctic terns) have come to find such a commute pretty standard fare. Yet for an Antarctic newbie like myself, this level of perpetual motion left me feeling as though we had traveled to the bottom of the earth. Fittingly, we’ve ended up just there. A mere 30+ hours in the air has landed us at McMurdo Station, Antarctica.

But let’s backup for a moment.

Up until leaving New Zealand, our travels had all been standard commercial airlines. But for NSF funded projects such as the McMurdo LTER in which we’re participating, travel to the field happens on Air National Guard LC-130 cargo planes. So in preparation for this we all spend a day in Christchurch, NZ at the CDC (Clothing Distribution Center), where we are briefed with orientation videos, our computers are security checked, and we are outfitted with our polar gear.

When we arrive at the CDC, we step into a large changing room where two orange duffle bags sit waiting for each person.

Gradually we pull out piece after piece of cold weather clothing. This ranges from giant puffy jackets and white rubber “bunny boots”, to silky long underwear and wool socks. The warehouse here is impressive and fully stocked.

 

After all of our gear preparation is finished, Ruth and I take to the streets of Christchurch. Walking downtown it’s immediately evident that the city is still in recovery, even three years after their devastating earthquake. Piles of rubble are fenced off on city blocks, and large open spaces are left where hotels, restaurants, and apartment complexes used to stand.

We walk through the city’s new “shipping container-chic” shopping centers, where fallen buildings have bee replaced by funky colored shipping containers selling street food, clothing, books, and jewelry.

In the evening, we walked to nearby Hagley Park to bring in the New Year. Crowds of people sat in the grass swaying to the sounds of local cover-bands singing Jonny Cash in Kiwi accents. Finally, per New Zealand tradition, we were all enchanted by the Arch Wizard of Canterbury as he casts an explosive (fireworks were involved…) spell on the crowd for coming year.

The Arch Wizard is projected onto a giant screen as he casts his spell.

 

The next day, we go back to the CDC to don our polar gear, check our bags, and get briefed by the ANG on flight to the ice. It’s a toasty ride for those 8 hours to McMurdo, as we have to wear our big red jackets, snow pants, and bunny boots on the plane.

Soon enough, we feel the plane glide onto the ice and we step out into a blindingly white world. The team has officially arrived in Antarctica.

Photo credit: Ruth Heindel

Stay tuned for updates on the science we are now preparing to do!

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Flying South

One of the most incredible parts about spending an entire field season in Greenland has been getting to see how dynamic this landscape can be. We’ve watched icy lakes melt, flowering plants bloom, wither, and bear fruit, rivers rise and fall, mosquitoes swarm and dissipate, and nights darken. One of my favorite changes of all to watch was the progression of the breeding season of the Lapland longspur (Calcarius lapponicus).

Lapland longspur (male)

Since the start of the season, these migratory songbirds have always been somewhere nearby in the tundra. When we arrived in early June, the male longspurs could dependably be found singing from their perches on willow branches. As Ruth and I were hiking in to one of her sites one day in early June, we flushed a female out of the shrubs a couple feet ahead of us. After our hearts settled a bit from the initial surprise, we took a closer look at the spot she had flown from and found a grass-lined nest hollowed out at the base of the shrubs. In it were 5 sort of olive-tan eggs dabbled with brown spots!

I couldn’t find a photo of the first lapland longspur nest we saw, but here’s another with three eggs.

Over the following weeks, we all kept our eyes peeled for startled females and informally tracked the progress of the nests we found. By June 15, two of the eggs in that first nest Ruth and I found had hatched (though they weren’t yet particularly recognizable as birds).

By June 29, a group of five nestlings in a different nest were starting to really stretch their necks and beg, eyes still closed.

On July 6, Christine and I found a couple of oversized longspur nestlings staring back at us for the last time.

We liked to imagine that each bumbling fledgling we saw testing its wings was one of the ones we had seen in its earlier stages.

When it comes to birds, Greenland is primarily a place of part-timers. Of its 240 or so known species, only 60 of those are considered permanent residents; most fly south for the winter. The northern wheatear (Oenanthe oenanthe) — a bird that seems enchanted with our red truck, whether they’re hopping upon the mirrors to get a peek inside when it’s parked or springing up from the roadside bushes to perform acrobatics in front of it while we’re driving  — has a particularly impressive migration among the passerines. Wheatears have a huge breeding range that spans parts of Eurasia, Greenland, Canada, and Alaska but overwinter in sub-Saharan Africa, where they bulk up on insects to do it all again come spring. That means the Alaskan birds travel almost 9,000 miles twice a year! – not to mention connecting two extremely different ecosystems.

Northern wheatear (male and female) – from arkive.org

As the summer draws to a close, in some ways I’ve been feeling a bit of kinship with the little guys. My journey should be a bit easier than theirs, though, even with customs.

To learn more about wheatears and how scientists are able to track their migrations: http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/17027565

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Climate warming in the Dry Valleys? Make your own prediction!

The McMurdo Dry Valleys Long Term Ecological Research project has been running for more than 20 years and is a huge operation, with 12 principal investigators (lead scientists) and dozens of collaborators and graduate students from institutions across the Unites States and beyond. As I’m sure you can imagine, it can be hard to keep such a large group of people organized and focused. Just think about trying to do group projects with only 3 or 4 classmates!

Even just three lead scientists in the field can lead to a long decision-making process.

One thing that keeps the project focused is the fact that every six years, the team submits a proposal to the National Science Foundation. In order to get money to fund the project, the lead scientists must show that they have a plan for the next six years. And one of the most important aspects of this plan is an overarching guiding question that the scientists hope to answer. This question is what keeps all the lead scientists on track – it’s their group project assignment. Right now, the big question has to do with climate warming: How will climate warming alter the McMurdo Dry Valley ecosystem? Based on more than 20 years of experience, the lead scientists have some ideas about what will happen. But rather than just give away their predictions, I want you to make your own. In order to do that, you need a little more information about the Dry Valleys.

What would this picture look like in a warmer world?

As I mentioned in an earlier blog, the McMurdo Dry Valleys make up the largest area of ice-free land on the Antarctic continent. But the Dry Valley system isn’t just bare rock. There are numerous mountain glaciers flowing down into the valleys, ending abruptly in tall cliffs of ice. These glaciers are critical components of the Dry Valley system because they provide the majority of the liquid water that flows during the brief Antarctic summer. Streams, which flow for only two months out of the year, carry this glacier melt-water across the bare soils into lakes. As the water runs over rocks and soils, it picks up minerals and nutrients, carrying them into the lakes as well.

Glaciers flow down into the Dry Valleys, ending in cliffs of ice. How will the glaciers change in a warming world?

Streams, which flow for only two months out of the year, carry this glacier melt-water across the bare soils into lakes. As the water runs over rocks and soils, it picks up minerals and nutrients, carrying them into the lakes as well. During the summer, only the very top layer of soil thaws – dig down less than a foot, and you’ll hit frozen soil, or permafrost. Lakes in the Dry Valleys are unlike any lakes we have in the Northeast – they are always covered in a thick layer of ice, even in the height of summer. Water underneath the ice remains liquid throughout the entire year, but it is separated from the rest of the world by a solid sheet of ice.

Lake Fryxell, covered in ice even in the height of summer. What will happen to the lakes in a warmer world?

Glaciers, streams, soils, and lakes are the physical parts of the Dry Valleys – but there is life found everywhere. Moss and algae can be seen by the naked eye, but hundreds of other organisms, too small for us to see, live in the soils, streams, lakes, and glaciers of the Dry Valleys.

So, with this introduction to the Dry Valleys, think about how the system might change with a warming climate. It might be helpful to consider each component (glaciers, streams, soils, and lakes) separately, but remember that they are all linked. In my next blog, I’ll discuss one of the predictions that the lead scientists have. First though, you have to make your own predictions!

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