Sometimes you can only gain a global understanding by focusing in on life up close. This week my co-authors and I published a paper on the geography of biodiversity change week in @sciencemagazine. We found that changes at local scales do not always reflect the biodiversity losses occurring at the global scale. Each one of the 12 million records in over 50,000 different places in the BioTime database is the work of scientists from around the world.
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/366/6463/339
The data for one of the study sites was contributed by Team Shrub from Qikiqtaruk – Herschel Island. We were back to the Arctic this past summer funded by @insidenatgeo to again monitor the long-term plots and this time to reveal the hidden plant diversity not yet captured to date. In July, PhD student Gergana Daskalova wrote a blog post about how looking up close reveals the fast pace of life and surprising diversity of tundra ecosystems:
When summer arrives, it is as if the whole tundra, from the plants to the wildlife, is swept into a flurry of life. This is the time when the diversity of plants on Qikiqtaruk is most striking. This high-paced life, all leads up to peak biomass, the time of the year when the tundra will be the greenest and most bountiful. From peak biomass onwards, life slows down, in time for the oncoming winter. In around 10 months, spring will return and the cycle will begin again.
https://teamshrub.com/2019/07/12/the-tundra-up-close/
This photo illustrates how zooming in on tundra ecosystems reveals a surprising diversity of life. Shades of pink, blue, yellow and white mix in to create a vibrant tundra landscape.
Photo by Gergana Daskalova
#Qikiqtaruk #TeamShrub #tundra #biodiversity #BioTIME #ecology #alpine #Arctic #UKinArctic #fieldwork #scicomm #discoveryukon #natgeoyourshot #HiddenArctic #GreeningArctic #RSGSgrants @teamshrub @gndaskalova @apecs.polar @edinburghuniversity @edinunigeosciences @nercscience @insidenatgeo
A field expedition is part science, part logistics, part adventures, but it is also all about the gear. When we launched our 2019 #GreeningArctic and #HiddenArctic expeditions, the first step was to test out our kit. In the blog post below, we take a whimsical look at the different equipment we used to capture the greenness and biodiversity of Arctic landscapes.
Sometimes a picture tells a 1000 thousand words. Sometimes a picture communicates the experience of Arctic research. Sometimes pictures answer scientific questions about Arctic responses to climate change. From cameras, drones, lenses, filters and sound recorders to Isla’s knee brace, our field equipment filled up the cargo hold in our charter plane. Once on Qikiqtaruk-Herschel Island, what we brought with us was all we had to weave together our scientific story.
We wouldn’t be able to collect the data we need without a fair bit equipment… It is always an adventure to try to pack all the right gear, figure out how your equipment works and particularly whether it will work without internet! Here’s to a summer with as few technical challenges as possible – to keep the content rolling in.
https://teamshrub.com/2019/07/10/all-about-the-gear/
Silhouetted against the low angled sunlight of an Arctic summer day, Gergana (@gndaskalova) prepares a Phantom RTK drone for take off. Once in the air, this drone will collect hundreds of images which when stitched together will allow us to capture Arctic landscapes in high-resolution 3D.
Photo by Isla Myers-Smith
#Kluane #TeamShrub #boreal #tundra #biodiversity #ecology #alpine #Arctic #UKinArctic #fieldwork #scicomm #discoveryukon #natgeoyourshot #dji #mavic @djiglobal @parrot_official #Canon #CanonCanada @canoncanada #MeAndMyManfrotto @manfrottoimaginemore #leefilters @leefilters #zoomh4n #LifeWithoutLimitations @ossur #HiddenArctic #GreeningArctic @teamshrub @gndaskalova @jtkerby @lhull87 @wandering.inuit #RSGSgrants @apecs.polar @edinburghuniversity @edinunigeosciences @nercscience @insidenatgeo
Over the next few weeks Team Shrub will be revisiting posts from our summer field season in the Canadian Arctic - returning to our research goals, reliving the adventures and revealing what we discovered along the way.
Three months ago in the very beginning of July, Team Shrub headed off from our starting points in Scotland, Canada and the US northwards to the Canadian Arctic. On the way we visited our southern field site in the Yukon Territory to check on our common garden experiment and to test out our camera and drone gear. In the blog post at the following link, Gergana (@gndaskalova) shares her perspectives on the beginning of our journeys to capture the greening of Arctic landscapes and the hidden tundra biodiversity beyond long-term monitoring plots:
An Arctic expedition takes a lot of planning and preparation. And it’s all done under the looming knowledge that whatever we forget to bring, we will have to do without. Whatever we don’t manage to get done in time, we might not be able to do once we are in the field away from towns, stores and the internet. Packing more and more boxes doesn’t quite seem to shake away the feeling of something escaping your mind. But after the hectic preparations, comes a sense of acceptance. I am here on Qikiqtaruk and I have what I have.
https://teamshrub.com/2019/07/05/northwards/
In this photo, Gergana tests out her drone data collection as the sun sets in a smokey haze from forest fires. In the summer of 2019, the boreal forest was burning both here in North American and also in Siberia. We even experienced the smoke 1000 km towards the pole as it wafted from boreal regions northward across the tundra. More smokey summers like this one are predicted as the Arctic continues to warm.
Photo by Malcolm Boothroyd (@malkolmboothroyd)
#Kluane #TeamShrub #boreal #tundra #biodiversity #ecology #alpine #Arctic #UKinArctic #fieldwork #scicomm #discoveryukon #natgeoyourshot #HiddenArctic #GreeningArctic #RSGSgrants @apecs.polar @edinburghuniversity @edinunigeosciences @nercscience @insidenatgeo
