First off, when I say that we "worked in the field", I am most usually referring to a site in the tundra that is 3 miles down the road from our cabin. This site is called CiPEHR, which stands for the Carbon in Permafrost Experimental Heating Research project. When you walk the half mile out to the site from the road, you first encounter a bunch of board walks that we walk on to avoid trampling what we are trying to study. Board walks lead to 3 different areas that we call "A", "B", and "C" - these are all replicates of the study. Below is a photo of what one of the areas looks like.
As I said in the last post, this research project is concerned with how plants and carbon will be impacted by climate change. Warming and drying are the two variables associated with climate change that we measure, so we have different areas set up that impose those conditions, as well as control areas so that we can compare. I'll save talking about the approach we take warming and/or drying our plots for another post.
To measure the impact of the warming experiment on plants, we use clear, glass chambers that are placed on top of square plots. These chambers have probes and sensors that record things like temperature and how much CO2 is present in the chamber. When it is time to take a measurement, doors on the top of the chambers close, so that plants in the plot are effectively enclosed in a tiny microclimate. After a minute and a half, in which the plants are still respiring and photosynthesizing, the doors open again and the measurements have been automatically stored to a data logger. All of this is automated and powered by solar and batteries.
We call the glass chambers "flux chambers" because the most important measurement that they take is carbon flux, aka how much CO2 is taken in by plants for photosynthesis while the doors are closed. But these chambers are just one aspect of the the data collection that goes on at CiPEHR. I'll save a discussion of those other things for later, but I hope this gives an idea of how a climate study in the tundra works.
This is so much like what I did in a wetland ecosystem research course at Mount Holyoke! It sounds like really cool stuff and I'd love to hear about your findings once you've done analysis post field-season. You should look up some papers by Jill Bubier, she was my professor and I believe has some stuff on what you're doing. Also, Gainsville, Florida is really cool and so's the university (or so I've heard). I have family down there so if you end up down there let me know - I may have to come visit!
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