Time flies when you’re preparing for fieldwork in the Arctic! From months to weeks to now days of preparation left before we head north to the Arctic there is always much to do! Styrofoam parts have step-by-step turned into drones, permit applications and risk assessments have been submitted and approved, protocol files have been written and refined and our boxes and bags have been piling up and making their way across the ocean ready to head North! Read on to find out more about what is in store for Team Shrub during the 2018 field season!
Our goals for the 2018 field season
Warming of tundra ecosystems is causing rapid rates of ecological change in the Arctic from vegetation change to dramatic permafrost thaw. Recent advances in drone technology allow us to quantify these climate change responses. This summer, funded by the Royal Geographical Society‘s Walters Kundert Fellowship, we will be testing the correspondence of tundra greenness, productivity, phenology and permafrost disturbance across spatial and temporal scales on Qikiqtaruk – Herschel Island, Yukon. How quickly is vegetation changing and permafrost thawing and can we predict where in the landscape the most rapid changes might occur? This research will allow us to answer this question and to identify the optimum scale of observation for tundra change.
Drones also allow us to quantify the landscape context of ecological change in ways that were not possible with on-the-ground data collection or satellite observations from space. Funded by a UK-Canada collaboration bursary from the NERC Arctic Office, we will use our drones to capture the representativeness of long-term ecological monitoring at focal research sites including Qikiqtaruk – Herschel Island in the Yukon, Alexandra Fjord on Ellesmere Island in Nunavut in collaboration with Greg Henry’s lab at the University of British Columbia and on Svalbard with collaborators from the Norwegian Polar Institute. We will use drones to collect spectral and structural data of tundra vegetation across scales of observation following common protocols established by the High Latitude Drone Ecology Network and will combine these data collection with ongoing ecological monitoring. Are our long-term records of vegetation change really representative of the change going on across the tundra biome? This summer’s research will help us figure out the answer to this key question.
This year for the first time, members of team shrub are off in three directions this summer from West to East and of course North to the Arctic! To find out more about members of the team this year and the specific projects they will be leading – read on!
The 2018 field crew:
How is Arctic plant diversity changing through time? – by Gergana
We’ve been monitoring vegetation change on Qikiqtaruk-Herschel Island for around 10 years now, and we are looking forward to another round of some of the classic tundra protocols – such as pointframing! It’ll be our seventh year of collecting data on the changing plant communities in 12 1x1m plots. Last year we found 32 species in both the Herschel and Komakuk plots, will we spot any new species in the plots this year? An added bonus will be the second run of the ITEX species pool protocol – we will start from the center of our plots and walk around in concentric circles (trying not to get too dizzy), recording all new plant species along the way. We will get the precise locations of the first individuals of each new species, so that then we can link the rate at which we find new species with the characteristic of the landscape, derived from drone imagery! Understanding tundra biodiversity changes at this and the other sites in the International Tundra Experiment Network requires looking beyond the 1x1m plots – a key goal of this summer’s research.
At what rate are shrubs expanding in the Arctic? – by Mariana
Another Qikiqtaruk classic field activity is continuing the repeat time series photographs of Ice Creek (see below). Each year the team captures photos in the same location looking out at the very same view as a photo that was first taken in 1987. In this series of photographs you can clearly see the vegetation change that has been occurring on the island over time. This year’s first aim is, of course, to continue the time series! But we will also take a new approach to quantify shrub growth over time with image analysis software by combining these repeat photographs with plot surveys and drone imagery. This will allow us to precisely quantify the shrub change that has occurred in this flood plain landscape and also enable us to better forecast future responses of shrub expansion across sites in the tundra. Are we seeing this dramatic change because the climate is warming, the growing seasons are getting longer or because this permafrost landscape is thawing releasing more nutrients into this Arctic watershed? Only with more data, will we know the answer.
First Test Flights in North America – by Noah
I’m new this year and looking forward to making my way North to the Arctic for the first time to fly drones for Team Shrub. A few newly purchased or built drones were sent to me in Washington, D.C. so I could practice flying before reaching the island. However, DC is the largest ‘No Drone Zone’ in the United States! Once reviewing flight procedures and assembling the drone fleet, Jeff and I drove an hour out of town, outside of the Federal Aviation Administration’s no fly zone, in search of an area suitable for operations. After a few failed attempts, we convinced a farmer to let us use his open field that was mostly used for polo matches on the weekends. This made for ideal conditions to launch and land the fixed-winged platforms. We successfully completed flights with the DJI Mavic Pro and Parrot Disco Pro Ag using the Pix4D capture app for mission planning. Finally, we completed multiple flight missions with the newly built FX-61 fixed wing: Malruk (the number two in Inuvialuktun the language). After two days spent testing drones with minor technical issues, no damaged equipment, and some brutally hot and humid weather, we packed everything in the car and rushed to the airport for Jeff to catch his flight out of town! With drone training complete, I am excited to join up with the field crew and to head up north to go collect some drone data!
Headed to the High Arctic – by Isla
I’ve been working in the Arctic for over a decade now. Seems like a long time ago that I first made my way across the Arctic circle in 2002 to check out the Toolik Lake research station – when I first discovered my love for tundra shrubs. Since then I have been to many tundra locations around the North, but there is one place I have never been – the Canadian High Arctic and Ellesmere Island. For as long as I have been working in Arctic ecosystems, I have been hoping to make it up to the iconic Alexandra Fjord research site. This is one of the longest running tundra ecological monitoring programmes out there led by Greg Henry from the University of British Columbia. Since 1992, Greg’s Lab have been monitoring the plant communities. Our very own Anne Bjorkman conducted her PhD research at this site. In fact, Team Shrub has been working with data from “Alex” for over five years now, but this summer for the very first time I will actually get to go myself and with the help of Team Shrub collaborator Jeff Kerby add some new drone data collection into the mix. With the data we hope to collect this summer, we hope to contextualize the long-term records from this site. This work will allow researchers to return in future to the precise locations where data collection has occurred for the past three decades. The drone data from this summer will also help us to figure out if long-term ecological monitoring records here, on Qikiqtaruk in the Yukon, and elsewhere in the Arctic are really representative of the responses to global change across the tundra biome.
So, here’s to a productive field season for Team Shrub! In our final days of field preparation we will be working hard, so that we are as prepared as we can be for the field adventures to come.
By Isla, Gergana, Mariana, Noah
Team Shrub 