Arctic

Willow – Part 3 of A Trilogy

| teamshrub

A Canadian field season: my experience, reflections and preliminary project results

By Erica Zaja
Figure 1. Erica downloading data from a TOMST logger on the Kluane Plateau in August 2022. Picture by Calum Hoad.

This summer, I was lucky enough to be given the opportunity to fieldwork in the Yukon Territory (Canada) under the supervision of Prof. Isla Myers-Smith. As Team Shrub’s research assistant, my job was to help the PhD students with their projects’ data collection. The PhD students in the lab are studying a variety of topics including above and below ground plant phenology, functional diversity across elevational gradients and drivers of greening captured through satellite data.

I was delighted to be part of the field team. It was also my very first time travelling outside of Europe and seeing such incredible landscapes, colossal mountain peaks and vast lakes on Northern Canada. It was amazing to finally see the plants and landscapes that I had read about for my undergraduate dissertation project focused on Arctic vegetation dynamics. In the field, I was given the opportunity to carry out my own independent research project and collect my own data. My project was based in the common garden experiment (Figure 2, Figure 3 ; see previous blogposts Willow and Willow-a sequel), set up by Isla in 2013 by Kluane Lake (Figure 2), which was my home for the whole summer.

Figure 2. On the left: map of study sites in the Yukon Territory, Canada: Kluane Plateau (purple pin) and Qikiqtaruk-Herschel Island (green pin). On the right: zoomed-in map showing Kluane Plateau (purple pin) and Common Garden site (red pin). Maps made using Google My Maps 2022.

The common garden experiment

Common garden experiments are plantings of species collected from different geographical sites and grown together under shared conditions. In Kluane, the goal of the common garden experiment is to test for genetic differentiation in growth form of tundra willows (Salix spp.) across climate and latitudinal gradients. The common garden experiment is designed to better understand the balance between genetic and environmental drivers of tundra shrubification. The underlying research question that the common garden is trying to answer is one about adaptation:

Are tundra shrubs genetically adapted to their local environment – thus limiting future vegetation change as shrubs expand their ranges northward – or do environmental factors drive the ‘plasticity’ in shrub growth?

Figure 3. The common garden experiment from above and Kluane Lake in the background. Picture by Iain Myers-Smith.

In particular, the purpose of the experiment is to assess the growth of three different widespread tundra willow species: Arctic willow – Salix arctica (Pall.), Diamond Leaf willow – Salix pulchra (Cham.) and Richard’s willow – Salix richardsonii (Hook.) (Figure 4) from Arctic and alpine source populations, under warmer temperature conditions. From 2013 – 2017, Arctic shrubs from Qikiqtaruk-Herschel Island (70°N) and alpine shrubs from the Kluane Plateau (61°N) – referred to as source populations – were transplanted into the warmer, common environment of the garden within the boreal forest. The boreal forest site, where the common garden is located, has an average summer temperature of 14°C, which is approximately 3-5°C warmer than the source population sites with summer temperatures ranging from 0°C to 12°C (Figure 5).

Figure 4a. Salix arctica on Kluane Plateau by Jiri Subrt.
Figure 4b. Salix pulchra in the common garden by Erica Zaja.
Figure 4c. Salix richardsonii on Kluane Plateau by Jiri Subrt.
Figure 5. Daily mean surface (a) and soil (b) temperature (°C) for the three sites over the 2022 summer season (June-July-August) showing differences in temperatures. Common garden in orange, Kluane Plateau in purple and Qikiqtaruk-Herschel Island in green. Data from TOMST loggers that I installed and collected from the end of the summer 2022 field season.

Project aims and data collection

The common garden experiment has been ongoing since 2013, with shrub growth and phenology monitoring happening every summer season for nine years as of this summer. My project’s aim was to continue the long-term monitoring of the common garden and to collect data from shrubs in alpine and Arctic source populations to compare to growth in the garden. Comparing the growth of shrubs in the common garden with the growth of shrubs in their respective source populations enables us to understand how the different shrub species respond when moved to a warmer environment. This comparison is allowing us to infer whether shrubs are showing strong genetic differentiation or whether they are responding to the local environmental conditions, with important implications for future climate-driven vegetation change.

Over the summer, I went to the common garden on a weekly basis and collected growth measurements including canopy height (cm), shrub width (cm), leaf length (mm) and stem elongation (mm). I also recorded shrub phenology – timing of lifecycle events including timing of green up, yellowing of leaves, leaf shed and full senescence. To sample the growth of shrubs from the alpine source population I hiked up the steep trail of the Kluane Plateau and tagged individuals of the three target Salix species, collecting growth measurements on a weekly basis as well. The round trip on the mountain was ~13km and a 1000m elevation gain – which on a weekly basis (and 16 times in total over summer) was a great fitness workout! Finally, to sample the growth and monitor phenology of shrubs from the Arctic source population I designed a protocol for the other half of Team Shrub to follow to collect data on Qikiqtaruk-Herschel Island. At the end of the summer, I also downloaded the phenology pictures taken by time-lapse cameras over winter and summer 2022 and the environmental data (soil moisture and soil, air and surface temperature) recorded by TOMST loggers (Figure 6).

Figure 6. TOMST logger surrounded by Salix arctica by the peak of the Kluane Plateau. Picture by Calum Hoad.

Preliminary results

Now, I am back in Edinburgh and I am working on data wrangling, data analysis and writing of main findings. I have been adding the data that I collected this summer to the long-term nine-year monitoring dataset of the common garden. So far, through these analyses we have found that:

  • Growth traits including canopy height, leaf length and annual stem elongation show strong plastic responses to warming for the tall willows (Salix pulchra and Salix richardsonii), but not for dwarf willow Salix arctica (Figure 7).
  • Willows from Kluane (southern population) show greater trait changes (canopy height change, leaf length and stem elongation increase) than willows from Qikiqtaruk (northern population) under warmer conditions (Figure 7).

Figure 7. Canopy height (a), leaf length (b) and annual stem elongation (c) differ between alpine (purple) and Arctic (green) shrubs in the common garden over nine years. Lines are generalised linear mixed models and 95% confidence intervals. Colours indicate different shrub source populations: purple for Kluane and green for Qikiqtaruk (Sample size = 260 individuals).

When comparing data from the common garden with source population data, we find that:

  • Shrubs at source populations are taller and have larger leaves than Salix pulchra and Salix richardsonii – but not Salix arctica – in the common garden (Figure 8).
  • There is no difference between stem elongation values in the common garden and in source populations for any of the target shrub species (Figure 8).

Figure 8. Differences in canopy height (a), leaf length (b), stem elongation (c) between alpine (purple) and Arctic (green) shrubs in the common garden, compared to data from source populations. Kluane source population in faded purple and Qikiqtaruk source population in faded green. Boxplot showing mean values from data I collected over summer 2022 (Sample size = 127 individuals).

Implications of findings

Overall, preliminary findings indicate that tundra shrubs grow rapidly under warmer conditions, but alpine shrubs (southern population) respond at a faster pace than Arctic shrubs (northern population). These findings suggest that there might be strong genetic differences between populations that constrain trait changes as response to warming, although willows do demonstrate high plasticity potential to warmer growing conditions. In summary, these preliminary results suggest that local adaptation may constrain tundra shrub growth responses to future warming, especially at northern sites, and that we should expect rapid – but not uniform – shrub encroachment with future warming across the tundra.

Next steps

  • Explore maternal effects to understand differences in canopy heights. Do taller parent shrubs (shrubs from source populations from which cuttings were taken and transplanted to the common garden) produce taller offspring in the common garden?
  • Process phenocam pictures and compare timing of different phenophases between common garden and source populations. Do northern willows senesce earlier than southern willows, being adapted to a shorter growing season?
  • Explore environmental drivers of shrub growth and phenology. Do warmer temperatures and wetter conditions favour shrub growth and alter the timing of phenophases?

What this field season has taught me

This summer has taught me really important scientific skills and lessons that I will benefit from throughout my career. Meeting First Nations Peoples and communities and learning about their lands, plants, wildlife and culture was the highlight of my summer. I learnt how to identify many of the native plant species of the region, I practiced field sampling techniques and I met interesting researchers working on a variety of different topics from glaciology to pika habitat conservation. Having the opportunity to spend so long in a place so far from my own home and experience is something I will always be grateful for. The three most important things this field season has made me value more are:

  • Living in close contact with nature
  • The beauty of tundra plants and boreal forests
  • My luck as an early career ecologist to be able to travel to such amazing places
Figure 9a. The view of Kluane Lake from the Kluane Plateau. Picture by Jiri Subrt.
Figure 9b. Very tired Erica at the peak of the Kluane Plateau on the last day of fieldwork! Picture by Jiri Subrt.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to the Kluane First Nation, Champagne and Aishihik First Nations for allowing us to work on their lands.  Thank you to all the people that worked so hard over the years to set up and maintain the common garden experiment, including Gergana Daskalova and Mariana García Criado. Thank you to this summer’s field team (Calum Hoad, Diana Jerome, Joseph Everest and Jiri Subrt) for helping me collect the data in the common garden and on the Kluane Plateau. Thank you to this summer’s Arctic team (Elise Gallois, Madelaine Anderson, Clara Surprenant, Zabrina Leslie) for collecting data on Qikiqtaruk.

Team Shrub’s 2022 journey to the Yukon

| imyerssmith

Where does a journey begin? We haven’t had a full field season for three years. Due to a little-known virus called COVID-19 we’ve had to wait until 2022. In a sense, the journey that takes us here to this field season began many years ago. But for some, the journey only started only a few short months ago when they applied to join the team. However you look at it, this year in 2022 we are a new team together on a new adventure. 

And where are we going on this adventure? Team Shrub is spending the summer across the Yukon Territory from the Kluane Region in the south, to Tombstone in the Central Yukon up to Qikiqtaruk – Herschel Island on the Yukon North Slope. For some of us this adventure takes place in our own backyards, others have never been as far as now from their hometown. In this blog post, we’ll introduce you to the 2022 Team Shrub Field Crew and the journey that we have taken to get here – to Kluane Lake in the Yukon.

Waves on Kluane Lake (photo credit: Isla Myers-Smith, National Geographic Society)
A boreal forest solstice sunset (photo credit: Isla Myers-Smith, National Geographic Society)

We’re a team of ten intrepid researchers hailing from the University of Edinburgh, Université de Sherbrooke and Yukon University. What brings us to the Yukon this summer is a love of plants, a fascination with the way the world works and a lack of fear of biting insects and super cold water. Together, we’re here to understand how plants respond when the climate warms, but we’re exploring that topic from all angles this summer using hyperspectral sensors, drones, time-lapse cameras, clippers and measuring tapes.

We’re trying to piece together a complex puzzle: from how individual plants respond as the climate warms, through to how plant and animal species interact with each other, up to how we can spot changing tundra landscapes from space. Across the summer, in these blog posts we’ll try to paint a picture of the systems we are studying and the things that we are finding as we battle the bugs, car troubles and belated shipments to conduct our research.

Team Shrub in our first full group photo in Whitehorse (photo credit: Sian Williams)

Each field season is its own journey and this field season has started with some unexpected hiccups. When we first arrived in Whitehorse and were running around town our vehicle started making a subtle beeping noise. “What is that?”, we asked ourselves, “maybe the check oil indicator”, a little while later Joe pulled me aside and said: “Isla, there is a screw poking out of our tire”. Now that we knew what the problem was – a rapidly flattening tire – we needed to figure out how to solve the problem.

After stops and calls to most of the tire stores in town we found by word of mouth ‘The Tire Guy’ who sorted us out with a fix of the flat, but also discovered that we had another problem tire. So then it was back to Canadian tire to purchase two new tires, an extra night in Whitehorse for me and a near full tire switch to get new tires on to replace the damaged ones. The vehicle still needs some other sorting out in the long-term, but for now we are back on the road for the rest of our field journey. And what a journey it should be with a crew of 10 people working at field sites across the Yukon on questions as broad as how are tundra growing seasons shifting with climate change, to what controls the growth of boreal forest shrubs or tundra shrubs growing in a boreal forest environment, to how to the traits and functions of plants vary across elevational and latitudinal gradients, through to how we can observe tundra biodiversity and greening from space.

The new tires on the vehicle (photo credit: Isla Myers-Smith)
Arctic willows surviving in the south (photo credit: Isla Myers-Smith, National Geographic Society)

If you ask my friends, I haven’t stopped talking about Canada since I returned to Scotland from an exchange to the University of Calgary in 2015. I’ve been stoked to get back to Canada ever since and I can’t think of a better way to do it than a field season in the mountains surrounding Kluane Lake in the Yukon! Before I could hop on a plane (or three) and make it to the field – I had to send the Team’s scientific kit ahead of me, which turned out to be more of a challenge than I was expecting.

It turns out DHL is an acronym for ‘Doesn’t Handle Lithium’ and the shipment boomerang-ed back to me with ‘too many batteries’ written on all the boxes. This began a frantic lithium treasure hunt to remove the elusive and sometimes very tiny batteries that seemed to be the problem and re-ship everything before I departed Scotland. Eventually, the shipment departed – fingers crossed we see it soon! After months of writing applications for Canadian drone permits, applying for equipment loans, and dealing an array of other miscellaneous team logistics, I’m delighted I’ve finally made it to Kluane, even if all of our shipment hasn’t yet due to unknown delays. I’m feeling very at home in the mountains (even with an overly warm welcome from the mosquitoes) and can’t wait to immerse myself in Yukon research, hiking, and cold water! And I can’t wait to start flying drones over melting snow patches to better understand tundra greening seen from space.

The shipment leaves (photo credit: Calum Hoad)
The shipment returns – noooo!!! (photo credit: Calum Hoad)

After finishing an ecology degree in Edinburgh a few months ago, I was super excited about this scientific expedition. I have always loved spending time outside but never spent more than two months in the field. This summer I am working as field assistant for Team Shrub, which will be my first big summer field season ever! After the initial excitement of knowing that the field season was happening, I started feeling slightly nervous.

Logistics, new equipment, not knowing what to expect, and mostly, doubting my ability to do the job. Once we arrived to Vancouver, we were welcomed by beach weather and ice-cream which alleviated any leftover stress – there’s only excitement left! Spending months researching tundra plant vegetation change for my undergraduate dissertation was a great experience, but I am thrilled to finally see the ecosystem I have only read about until now! As field assistants, we are here to help with any project from Team Shrub or our collaborators. With the amount of projects to work on, we will certainly not get bored! I am also hoping to find inspiration for a Master’s project. And the best tip for fieldwork? Don’t have any expectations, go with the flow! 

Jetlag morning beach walks in Vancouver (photo credit: Jiri Subrt)
Fancy ice creams in Vancouver with Zulu the dog (photo credit: Isla Myers-Smith)

My taxi driver at Vancouver airport told me that I’d have a hard time doing research because there are no plants in the Arctic. This summer, I am on a mission to prove him wrong.

This should have been the third full summer field season of my PhD – but it turns out to be the first! Out of the sleepy lull of lockdowns and travel cancellations, this summer’s field adventures have been a blast to help to organise (over the past three years)!

From trialing my field methods for the NERC-funded TundraTime Project including the above-and-below ground protocol in the snowy Cairngorms National Park, to obtaining my drone pilot licences, to organising international shipments for my collaborators, and much more, I’ve certainly been kept busy! This spring, I completed an internship with the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research in Trondheim, and from there I hopped onto a plane to the UK for a fleeting visit and to grab my thermal long-johns and bug nets. Then I flew straight to the west coast of Canada for a few weeks in Kluane which will be followed by a month up on Qikiqtaruk. I can’t wait to learn more about these wonderful places and the phenology of those tundra plants and of course to embrace my old friends mosquitoes with open arms!

Arrival in Whitehorse (photo credit: Isla Myers-Smith)
Soil cores before removal on the Kluane Plateau (photo credit: Zabrina Leslie)

Having spent multiple seasons in the Colorado Rockies, I am not a stranger to field work – but every season is different! I arrived in the Yukon late one evening in a blaze of boarding passes, oversized bags, and an 18-hour Shakira-filled playlist. I may have been the last to arrive but as lead food coordinator, my joining the team was long awaited. Organising nine weeks-worth of food across the Yukon was a challenge, but turns out if you buy enough Country Time, Ritz crackers, and Oreos, you can keep a team of 10 pretty happy.

Conversely, if you make 10 pounds of tortellini in an evening, people may never let you live it down. Despite being North American, I now live in Edinburgh and have spent very little time in Canada, but I’m delighted to finally spend some time further north amongst the spectacular scenery of Kluane and the wider Yukon. I’ve taken some measurements, made millions of to-do lists, and swatted some mosquitoes, so I feel like I’m settling into the fieldwork just fine. I’ll be deep in the forests bushwhacking to get to Boreal shrubs in no time. Hopefully by the end of the summer I’ll be closer to understanding how they respond to variations in climate.

Hanging out in the Superstore parking lot (photo credit: Erica Zaja)
Boreal forest reflections (photo credit: Isla Myers-Smith, National Geographic Society)

It feels great to be back in Yukon! After spending last summer here in Kluane, the place feels very familiar! There was a bit of stress leading up to our departure, but all things considered, Clara and I had a pretty smooth journey from Sherbrooke to Whitehorse, where we met up with the rest of the team. After almost two years of chatting on Zoom, it is a relief to finally meet the Edinburgh-based Team Shrub in person. Some are taller (Joe) than expected and some are smaller (Erica), but all are 10/10.

I’m very excited to show the team around the Kluane plateau, have a team dip in the lake and explore this wonderful region together! We’ve had a lot of fun so far and I’m excited to head up north soon for my postponed first Arctic field season as a part of the Canadian Airborne Biodiversity Observatory project. With hyperspectral sensors and cameras, scanners and balances were going to test how we can use information beyond what we can see with the eye to capture the biodiversity of tundra ecosystems and the properties of tundra plants. But first, we needed to collect the first of the common garden data of the season.

Salix arctica in the common garden (photo credit: Isla Myers-Smith, National Geographic Society)
Measuring shrubs in the common garden (photo credit: Isla Myers-Smith, National Geographic Society)

My journey to the Yukon started while watching a lecture on Arctic greening and the impacts on herbivores by Isla, something clicked. I got curious and investigated vegetation change in the Porcupine caribou habitat as my dissertation topic. I read papers about climate change, shrub encroachment, caribou diets, hoping that one day I’d get the chance to see a real caribou! Luckily, a job opportunity from Team Shrub popped up: a call for field assistants for the upcoming field season in the Yukon.

I couldn’t miss the opportunity! Once I got my application sent in, I started slightly panicking. Would I be up for the task? Self-doubt became even more real when I did get the job! A huge amount of logistical prep started piling up. Applying for funding, buying equipment, writing a project proposal to collect my own data. The next few months were a blur. Suddenly there I was on my very first long-haul flight. Excitement levels were over the roof – 11/10. After a few wobbles on the way, we finally made it to Kluane Lake. I had never seen such huge mountains and I can’t wait to experience more of this incredible place – despite having to karate my way out of mosquito clouds!

On the plane (photo credit: Isla Myers-Smith)
Clouds of mosquitos (photo credit: Isla Myers-Smith, National Geographic Society)

Having just finished the first year of my undergrad at Université de Sherbrooke, I am the baby of this year’s Team Shrub! I’ve travelled a ton(ne) around the southern Canadian provinces, but I had been looking for an excuse to explore the Great North within the Great White North. I was astounded when the opportunity to join Team Shrub fell within my reach after only two semesters studying ecology. I can’t wait to learn tundra ecology in the field with the team!

Madi, a few too many oversized bags and I were lucky to experience smooth sailing from Sherbrooke all the way to Whitehorse. Now, I am thrilled to be helping out on some amazing projects for this summer, here in the breath-taking mountainous landscape of Kluane and then on Qikiqtaruk later this summer. I couldn’t have asked for a more exciting first field season! Here to more bonfires on the beach.

Fire on the beach (photo credit: Isla Myers-Smith, National Geographic Society)
Campfire chat (photo credit: Isla Myers-Smith, National Geographic Society)

The mountains of North Western Canada have long been a draw and the opportunity to spend a PhD summer working there was an opportunity far too good to pass up. I dove into the organisation and spent a spring swimming in permits, logistics and admin for far flung lands. After all of this anticipation and excitement, we’ve made it to the Yukon and are all settled in, accompanied by our adorable trio of resident ground squirrels – Chipchop, Jean Jacques and Roger.

A couple of days ago, we got the chance to hike up to the alpine on the Kluane Plateau and I got to see the tundra ecosystems that I’ll be studying for the very first time. The mountains of the Kluane region are just as if not more majestic than I was imagining. Time to get measuring, drone flying and climbing some hills to figure out how the diversity of tundra ecosystems and the functions that plants provide vary up mountains and across the Yukon.

June flowers (photo credit: Isla Myers-Smith, National Geographic Society)
Chipchop, Jean Jacques and Roger the Arctic Ground Squirrels (photo credit: Calum Hoad)

My journey officially started as a kid growing up in the Yukon with close connections to the Kluane area. From my obsession with rocks and exposure to plants and animals from my elders, I was hooked with being out on the land and this continues to this day. This summer, I have just completed my BSc in Northern Environmental and Conservation Sciences with the University of Alberta and Yukon University. My journey with Team Shrub started when an email fell into my inbox.

As a teenager, I dreamed to become a photographer for Nat Geo. This summer, I have the amazing opportunity supported by the National Geographic Society STEM field assistant program and see my home in a new capacity as a researcher! Leading up to the field season, my home served as port of arrival for many Team Shrub packages. This caused much confusion within my family: who was this mysterious Dr. Isla Myers-Smith? My photos about the state of snowmelt on the Kluane plateau allowed the team to get a general idea of what to expect. My knowledge of the Kluane region has made me a bit of a tour guide to this year’s eclectic group. I am very excited to join the Arctic crew to explore new horizons on Qikiqtaruk island this summer.

Hedysarum boreale subsp. mackenzii (photo credit: Isla Myers-Smith, National Geographic Society)
Our neighbour here at Kluane Lake (photo credit: Joe Everest)

This is only the beginning of an exciting journey for Team Shrub. We hope it will be a journey of discovery, inspiration and scientific advancement. Most of us are very much out of our comfort zone, but having an amazing team helps to create the feeling of being at home in the field. There will be challenges ahead, but we are ready to tackle them!

Shrubs at sunset on the shores of Kluane Lake (photo credit: Isla Myers-Smith, National Geographic Society)

Words and photos by Team Shrub

Life in the High Arctic

| teamshrub

Words by Isla Myers-Smith, Photos by Jeff Kerby

Summertime at Alexandra Fjord. 78 degrees north. The sun shines all day long.

Around midnight, you can experience the phenomenon of a double sun where the sun reflects off the still waters of the Fjord. One evening, we even had a quadruple sun with sun dogs – the mirrored sunlight in the air – also reflecting off the waters.

Like everywhere in the Arctic, midnight is the most magical time. But to fill you in on life in the High Arctic, here is our routine as the sun rotates around us in the 24-hour light of an Arctic summer’s day.

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The mornings are often the coldest time. Temperatures are chilly, fluctuating between zero and 12 degrees. Never go out without your down jacket packed and your hat to hand. The ocean is choked with sea ice and each time the tides rise and fall the ice bergs rotate, melt, and crack to create brand new ice sculptures along the shore. Glaciers flow into the Fjord valleys, with the local Twin Glacier slowly retreating at around five metres a year back up to the permanent ice fields. Ice surrounds you even at the end of July – this is the High Arctic after all.

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The daily routine keeps us to schedule (unlike in the Western Arctic where we move to “Herschel Time”) with morning (7:30 am) and evening (7:00 pm) “sched.” – a radio communication for all of the remote camps with the logistics coordinators at the Polar Continental Shelf Programme Headquarters in Resolute Bay, Nunavut.

“Hello 26, this is Alexandra Fjord, we hear you 5 by 5, all is well and we have no traffic”.

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Breakfast times are a chance to catch up with the research crew, analyze our last night’s dreams with the “Dream book” or learn an Inuktitut phrase such as ‘would you like some coffee’? ᑳᐱᑐᕈᒪᕖᑦ? It is also a chance to chat about field research progress and to plan the days and the science with the team. After breakfast and packing it is out to the field – Cassiope, Dryas, Willow, Sax Opp, Fert, or far away Dome are the field sites that one could be heading off to. Or maybe it is a hike farther afield to the glacier or up the fjord valley hill-slopes.

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When you are on Team Drone, the packing takes a bit longer and the backpacks are a fair bit heavier with drones, sensors, calibration panels, many batteries, water bottles… and of course lunch! But once you get out there (which often doesn’t take long), and the weather is good, then it’s drones in the air. Drones can be a bit challenging in the High Arctic, only a few hundred km from the magnetic North pole, but more on that in another blog post. We were pretty surprised by how well the data collection went given the potential pitfalls of drone work in this far north, from GPS to weather challenges. All and all it was an incredibly productive trip with over 600 GB of drone data collected!

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By the middle of the day, you are getting hungry. Time to eat your sandwich and share your daily chocolate bar – will it be a Mars Bar, Twix, Kit Kat or Coffee Crisp? The views are always stunning whichever way you look as you lunch and the skies are always changing. This summer we had a celestial encounter with a massive fireball exploding over the fjord – to find out more check out Jeff’s account of the meteor (in prep!). And if you read the media reports they say that “nobody saw it”, but we did or some of us did!!!

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Once the fieldwork is done and the sun is moving lower in the sky and towards the North it is time to pack up the drone gear and head back to camp. On the way back to our Arctic home of white-painted wooden RCMP buildings you might chance to see an Arctic hare or our fjord companion the Arctic fox. When you get back to camp you can drop the bags, enjoy the views out across the water and head inside to start some metadata recording and to back up all the drone imagery as the dinner preparations progress.

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After sched., a leisurely dinner, dishes and once the data are all backed up it could be time for an epic game of Boggle where, if you can’t find actual words, feel free to write down potential new ones like:

Bant (noun) – One unit of banter. e.g., “I met Isla out on the tundra and we had a quick bant before getting back to work”.

Murl (verb) – To spit out one’s tooth paste, but in such a way as there is no spitting involved. Somewhat similar to hurling up your tooth paste, but less active. “We gathered around the slop pit to murl before heading to bed.” (Jeff here: Turns out Murl IS a word. We were close to the correct definition. I want my points!)

Besides, the polar bear ate sections L to M of the dictionary, so if your word starts with any of those letters, no one can prove that your word isn’t real!

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After murling, enjoying the midnight rays of the sun glancing off the water, and getting ready for bed, the last person has to bar the door with the long plank. Up at Alex Fjord, we are staying in polar bear country and at all times one needs to be aware that we could get a visit from the year-round, white and fluffy inhabitants of this part of the Arctic. The RCMP buildings get annual winter visits from the local bear who has left his nose and paw prints on the windows and walls.

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The end of the day is closing your eyes with the golden light washing over you from the windows, wishing you could stay up longer, but knowing that 7:30am sched. is just a few short hours away.

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The Plants of Qikiqtaruk. Part 1: The Shrubs

| teamshrub

On a cold and distant island the stars of our science are sleeping. Buried under a thick winter blanket, Qikiqtaruk in winter is exactly what many people imagine when I say I work in the Arctic: awash with snowdrifts, locked in sea ice, home for polar bears and not a huge amount else.

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Qiqiktaruk in winter

Yet here on Team Shrub we study plants. Come the summer sun, green tendrils of life emerge from the snow and the hardy, beautiful and fascinating plant life of the tundra begins to grow. Diverse in the manner of tropical rainforests it may not be, but these cold lands are nonetheless brimming with more life than you might think, featuring old favourites that adorn the hills of Scotland to wacky monstrosities that seem to spring out of some primeval past.

In this series we will be exploring some of our favourite species from our most northern field site, starting with our namesake: the shrubs.

The Shrubs

What makes a shrub? Such has been the dinnertime conversation at many a Scottish Feast. In short: short. Woody. Multi-stemmed. Sometimes evergreen, sometimes deciduous, always beautiful.

The willows

Qikiqtaruk is home to a grand total of nine willow species. Not bad for an isolated Arctic island. The Salix genus dominates much of the upper shin-high canopy, though you can find yourself wading through some of the bigger fellows. Bjorn even reaches chest height. Deciduous, green-leaved, the willows add a certain magic to the tundra as their fluffy seed spirals in the air on a breezy day, while bright red catkins dot the tundra floor underfoot.

Salix pulchra

Possibly our favourite shrub on the island. This beautiful willow surely lives up to its name: long ruby stems and startling emerald-bright diamond leaves, giving Salix pulchra its common name, diamond-leaf willow. On Qikiqtaruk Salix pulchra grows mostly along the ground in large, clonal mats that creep between tussocks of cottongrass and shelter small white Stellaria flowers. It’s one to watch though, as further south this willow can reach well over head height. Here, where the weather is sheltered and nutrients seep from the permafrost, Salix pulchra grows faster, bigger, redder, standing out from its neighbours atop the palsas, while on the hilltops we have already seen a tripling in its canopy height since we first started recording in 1999.

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Salix pulchra leaves catching the sunlight. The beautiful willow is a Western Arctic specialist found across tussock tundra and mountain landscapes of the Yukon and Alaska.

Salix richardsonii

One of the giants of Qikiqtaruk, Salix richardsonii, or Richardson’s willow, is the most common tall shrub on the island. It grows mostly in wetter, sheltered areas such as river floodplains, where nutrients flow freely and life is as easy as it gets in this bastion of land in the Arctic ocean. Forming a dense, shrubby canopy of bright green leaves, Salix richardsonii nonetheless has a rather grizzled visage, giving it our nickname ‘Old Man Willow’. Twisted branches and flaking orange-brown bark, flecked with white specks of age or hardship. Fat, hairy stipules easily mark it apart from other willows. A canopy bully, Salix richardsonii is now dominating areas where it can grow, rapidly expanding in many parts of the island as the climate warms.

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Encroaching Salix richardsoni is taking over the Ice Creek watershed on Qikiqtaruk. This is one of the tallest willows on the island and elsewhere in the Arctic where in can dominate tundra landscapes with dense, metres tall and sometimes impenetrable thickets of willows.

Salix arctica

This small willow is a remarkable example of the success and resilience of plants in these cold lands. Salix arctica, the Arctic willow, has the most northernmost geographic range of any woody plant, reaching all the way to the north coast of Greenland at 83 degrees north. A ground-hugging, prostrate woody shrub, it spreads woody limbs akimbo, stretching out in all directions along the top of the permafrost. Thin stems become roots, become stems again and it advances clonally, covering much of the surface until it is impossible to tell where one plant begins and another ends. Even if the main “trunk” is destroyed or decays, the plant will not die: an attempt at immortality. Unlike many of the other dwarf willows, Salix arctica eschews the small leaves and catkins of its fellow family members, and sticks to the strategy of the taller shrubs that bigger is better. Big, fat leaves emerge from the brittle stems, which giant fluffy catkins can strike up from the ground surface several times taller than the rest of the plant. Unusually, on Qikiqtaruk even the leaves and stems of Salix arctica strike upwards for the sky, possibly a hybridisation of one kind or another, and can stretch up even as much as 20cm from the soil.

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Salix arctica the Arctic willow with flowers blooming in spring. This is one of the most widely distributed plants across the tundra biome found from the Rocky Mountains of Colorado to the very tip of Greenland.

Salix reticulata

Just like Salix arctica, this dwarf willow hugs the floor with brittle stems and clonal creeping growth in all directions. The thick, leathery leaves of this plant give it its common name: net-leaved willow, which are criss-crossed and pocked with deep grooves. Once fallen in winter, these hardy leaves last, resisting decomposition and creating a crunching carpet underfoot.

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The waxy leaves of the net-leaved willow, Salix reticulata. Like with Salix arctica, this is a very widely distributed willow found in much of the Arctic, the Alps and even in Scotland!

Salix polaris and Salix phlebophylla

The smallest of Qikiqtaruk’s willows, these two species take you down onto hands and knees to appreciate their tiny round leaves and stalk-like stems. Hugging the ground in dense mats, often on the drier sections of hillsides or edges of tussocks, I often have trouble telling these apart from leaves alone. Yet catch them right in the season, and the red catkins of the polar willow (Salix polaris) stand out as one of the brightest flashes of red on the tundra, flecks of delicate colour, blood-rich, that in a matter of days dissolve into white and wind.

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The bright red catkins, fluffy white seeds and verdant green leaves of Salix polaris often remind Isla of the colours of Christmas!

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The tiny 2 – 4 mm long leaves of Salix phlebophylla covering the ground in a mat. Named for the skeleton leaves it ‘leaves’ behind year after year, this is one of the smallest willows in the world!

Salix glauca and Salix niphoclada

Two of the rarer tall shrubs on Qikiqtaruk, grey willow (Salix glauca) and snow willow (Salix niphoclada) can be a challenge to find, but occasionally stand out on the hillside where some seed has found its way to establishing. The grey-tinged haze of glauca willows sets them apart from the rest, while the sometimes rose-tinged stems and somewhat brighter leaves of niphoclada can cause us headaches when we search for Salix pulchra to sample. These two willows with green leaves covered in fine grey hairs and stems with a blue-green and waxy look to them can be indistinguishable when they have no visible catkins, which is much of the time, so they are often clumped together in our analyses.

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Less majestic than Salix glauca in other parts of the Arctic, here on Qikiqtaruk this willow can only eek out an existence in the warmest microclimates of south-facing slopes.

Salix alaxensis

Finally, the Goliath of Arctic willows. Salix alaxensis grows tall and often somewhat spindly up on Qikiqtaruk, almost buddleia-like, as if it wants to reach the sun and doesn’t care how it gets there. The leaves are grey-green, but a bright, fluffy white underneath – lannate, densely villous or tomentose if you will. Did you know there are over 20 botanical terms for being hairy! Certainly easy to identify. We have only recently discovered Salix alaxensis, the Alaskan willow, on Qikiqtaruk, though since individuals are already well established, thus it must have been evading detection for many decades.

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Isla with a particularly tall Salix alaxensis found on Qikiqtaruk in the summer of 2016 on a particularly buggy walk back from the retrogressive thaw slumps along the coast.

The birches

Betula nana and Betula glandulosa

If you spend much of your time tramping about the high hilltops of Scotland you may already be familiar with dwarf birch. Small, thickety and brittle, the dense brown stems of Betula nana or Betula glandulosa have snagged many a bootlace and tripped many a toe. Still, I love the Betulas for their leaves alone, some of the most perfect forms on the tundra. On Qikiqtaruk, Betula nana holds sway on flatter patches of hilltop; a low growing shrub that announces its presence as a darker green blur on the landscape, or from the waft of crushed Labrador tea underfoot, which tends to grow alongside birch. Unlike many other tundra sites, where Betula has run rampant as the climate warms, it so far seems to be losing out to the willows here, though in some places the dense, spotted branches form an impenetrable tangle across whole swathes of tundra. As for the difference between nana and glandulosa, the latter is taller, larger leaved, greater noduled. Or not, as the case may be – perhaps they are one species after all, marked apart not by genetics but simply variation.

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A very dwarf birch, Betula nana/glandulosa – is it one species or two? – nestled amongst compatriots including Rhododendron tomentosum and Vaccinium vitis-idea (see below).

Tundra tea

Rhododendron tomentosum

A hero of the Arctic smellscape, Rhododendron tomentosum is another favourite of ours. The shrub itself is part beautiful: white flowering baubles full of rich scent, rusted felt underside of leaves, and part ugly: the ash-black branches spindly, frail and commonly dead, dark leaves often matted and speckled, a formless shape creeping amongst better rivals. But altogether outstanding are the leaves themselves. Rhododendron tomentosum, marsh Labrador tea, may not quite have the glamour of its more grandiose and much less marshy southern cousin, but its leaves still bear the scent of a thousand tundra days; that unmistakable and uncapturable spice of terpene and midnight chlorophyll. This is a shrub that makes trait work bearable, and often one that prompts a pocket full of leaves for the walk home.

 

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We are crazy about the fragrant smell of Labrador tea (Rhododendron tomentosum), Ledum (its old name), I got to get some!

The berry bearers

Arctostaphylos rubra (Arctous rubra)

One for the photo albums. A. rubra, or bearberry, is certainly one of the more iconic tundra shrubs due to its bright, Rudolph-red leaves that can stain the bare tundra at certain times of year. Another prostrate-growing shrub, the ovate, vein-y leaves can bear a resemblance to the leather coins of Salix reticulata when green, though are stretched and less waxy. It is when the winter begins to draw in that Arctostaphylos rubra sets itself apart as the leaves turn, and formerly invisible patches of bearberry shine out. Red too, the berries that hide in amongst the leaves: a food source for humans and wildlife alike, though their diuretic properties also lend themselves to herbal medicines and may explain the preponderance of stained bear poo littering the tundra in autumn. A closely related species, Arctous alpina, looks almost identical except for the red berries that turn black when ripe.

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The bright red leaves of Arctostaphylos rubra in the autumn intermixed with some Vaccinium uliginosum.

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Arctous alpina the black berries of alpine or ‘black’ bearberry.

Vaccinium vitis-idea and Vaccinium uliginosum

Another set of plants that will be well known to hillwalkers, the Vaccinium genus is the main fruit bearer for local people and hungry researchers. The smallest, Vaccinium vitis-idea (Ligonberry, cranberry, cowberry – you name it!), carpets the surface with tiny, glossy leaves and even glossier red berries where cover is sparse and soils fairly dry. In places the leaves can turn to a deep, merlot red, or still drip with pink-white cowbell flowers. Harder to find on Qikiqtaruk, Vaccinium uliginosum (blueberry, bilberry etc.) rise higher from the undergrowth where soils are wetter, their berries blue, stems tough brown-green and leaves thinner and more leathery.

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Vaccinium vitis-idaea (and Empetrum nigrum). These Arctic cranberries make a delicious pie and jam if you have the patience to pick enough!

Rubus chamaemorus

Cloudberry, baked apple, or knotberry in England and averin in Scotland is best known on Qikiqtaruk as aqpik. This is one of the most prized of berries in this part of the world and when perfectly ripe is a delicious topping to pancakes, makes an excellent jam or is the perfect snack when stopping across the tundra. Quick to turn from unripe to rotten, finding your patch of cloudberries in season on Qikiqtaruk can be a challenge.  It is rare out there, preferring the wetter habitats on the edges of ponds or in ice-wedge terrain.

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The delicate salmon pink berries of ripe aqpik or cloudberry.

Empetrum nigrum

A heathery-looking dwarf shrub that is equally at home in the Scottish Highlands, on mountaintops around the northern hemisphere, under conifer canopies of the boreal forest, and in vast swathes of tundra. Also a clonal shrub, Empetrum nigrum can form dense mats stretching uninterruptedly for meters, or even tens of meters. Its super-power is allelopathy: the leaves contain toxic chemicals which, when leached into the ground after the rain, hinder germination or growth of other plant species. Fun fact: the wood smells delicious when boiled in water (don’t ask, and probably don’t drink).

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The bright leaves and black berries of Empetrum nigrum

The dwarf evergreens

Dryas integrifolia

The spear shaped leaves of the mountain avens is to me another iconic shape of the tundra. Whether forming into a sharp coniferous tip, or padded out into the more billowy, deciduous-tree form of Dryas octopetala, these OS map symbols of leaves are unrecognisable wherever they grow. But for many, Dryas integrifolia is best known for its flowers – the perfect white circles that polka-dot the tundra floor – and for the twisted filaments that are the phoenix seedhead, catching the sunrays and diffracting light and themselves across the tundra air.

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The bright white flowers of Dryas integrifolia.

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Twisting filaments of Dryas integrifolia as the flowers set seed at the end of the summer.

Cassiope tetragona

Growing amongst the rocks and along the dry hillsides, the weeping white bells of Arctic bell heather are another distinctive site at the height of a tundra summer. A relative of the glorious purple heather of the Scottish hills, Cassiope tetragona is similarly small and woody, minute spear-shaped leaves wrapped tight into the stem, forming scaly round limbs. As the season turns, these stems gradually shift from green to orange-brown, giving the tundra an almost burnt look, flowers rusting away to leave the brittle seed heads proud to the wind.

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Cassiope tetragona with four flower heads as per it’s name is one of the longest lived of tundra shrubs, with individuals being found that can be dated back to over 200 years.

Bonus: The uncategorised

Silene acaulis

If you’ve reached this far, well done for getting to the end. As a special bonus, I’ve included Silene acaulis, better known as moss campion. There is some confusion here as to whether Silene acaulis is best classed as a shrub or a forb. Silene as a genus refers to the campions, delicate flowers of field and rocks, all pink and white and herbaceous green leaves. Yet the harsher climates to which Silene acaulis has adapted produces a hardy, cushion-like shrub, past leaves compressed into woody stems. For myself, I class this bright plant as a forb, yet since I have seen it classed otherwise so under some schemes, it is worth a brief mention here.

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The resilient and secretive Silene acaulis

Beyond confusion of classification, Silene acaulis is by no means one to be relegated to the bottom of any list. It grows where often nothing else will, building a bivouac out of its own sharp leaves against the elements. Within this thick shell, the plant can grow to engulf surrounding rocks occasionally supporting other tiny plants as they grow through chinks in its armour. Most spectacular are the pink-purple flowers, which at the height of the summer dot these minuscule mountains like dewdrops, or like pins in a pin-cushion. Silene acaulis is rare on Qikiqtaruk – the soft, undulating landscape means there are few surfaces too harsh for competitors. But I have seen one once, in passing, making a mental note to come back to sample it later. I have never found one since.

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A rare find for Qikiqtaruk, a bit of Silene acaulis, spotted by Isla in the summer of 2017.

By Haydn, Sandra and Isla

5 (More) Steps to Becoming an Awesome Field Assistant

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Being a field assistant for the first time isn’t always easy. Following on from Izzy’s recent post, here are five more great tips from Cameron on how to be an awesome field assistant (and to have an awesome time).

1. Apply for funding

Being a field assistant costs money. In many cases you might be employed by an organisation, research group or researcher to carry out the role, in which case they will be covering your costs. However, you may be required to (or want to) provide funds yourself. But don’t fret! There are plenty of funding opportunities hidden out there for the proactive field assistant to find. Most funding requires you to submit a proposal outlining what you will be working on and how much you think it will cost. Once you have drawn up a proposal for one funding application it is easy to tailor it for others. Keep an eye on the submission deadlines and apply to as many funds as possible. In my experience, funds for undergraduates aren’t very competitive, so make use of them!

Information for funds available for University of Edinburgh Students can be found here. 

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Cameron fishing for funds

2. Take good equipment

When you are setting up experiments in a snowstorm, or climbing mountains before breakfast, you quickly learn to appreciate the value of good equipment. However, if you haven’t been in the field before it can be hard to figure out what sort of stuff to bring with you. For me, the most important bits of kit are good waterproofs, a decent backpack, and an excellent pair of walking boots (we had a pair fall apart this summer). If you are going to spend a lot of time in the field you should treat yourself to some nice gear. It’s totally worth the investment and good quality stuff can really improve your comfort and safety. Why not add the cost of a beautiful jacket and boots into your funding application (for health and safety reasons, of course)?

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How to mend a broken sole


3. Ask lots of questions

“Why are we digging up old tea bags from the ground and what’s the deal with all of these dead leaves?”

Take the opportunity to learn as much as you can from the people you are working with. Asking questions and figuring out why you are doing a task can really help you get more out of your time in the field and cement knowledge learned in the classroom. You will also likely be working with people further on in their career than you. If you are thinking about a career in academia, take this chance to pick their brains about all aspects of academic life.

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Haydn showing us the ways of the shrub


4. Take the bad with the good

 Hopefully you will experience many great things during your time as a field assistant but you might also experience some pretty bad lows. The work can be gruelling and the days long. A healthy mentality is key to enduring the bad moments and enjoying the good. Make sure to talk to your team if you are having difficulties, and look after yourself. It really is worth it at the end.

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Conquer your mind and you can conquer the tundra


5. Let yourself be enchanted…

Fieldwork can take you to some truly special locations. We get to explore hidden valleys, shadowy forests, and secret little places far from any path. Please take some time, in-between sampling and recording data, to fully appreciate the wonderful environment and people around you. Not only does this add to your overall experience, it can also turn you into a passionate advocate for these incredible areas. Tell the stories of these places anyway you can, be it on Facebook, in prose, or down the pub. The more people know about your field site, the less likely it will fade into obscurity and be lost.

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Soaking up the view

By Cameron

Team Shrub – 2017 in Review

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It was a big year for Team Shrub in 2017.

Like an Arctic willow in the tundra sunshine, we soaked up the beautiful rays of knowledge and delved further into the active layer of understanding. We grew taller and bushier as new members joined the team, and branched out into new areas of research. We bore fluffy research paper catkins, for our ideas and findings to be spread on the breeze of scientific discovery, and we put down new roots, to support, work with and learn from others in the future. And, of course, we had a thoroughly enjoyable time doing it all.

So as we look forward to all that 2018 brings, we are taking some time to revisit the year gone by, our favourite blog posts, and just how far we came in 2017.

Looking ahead: After a politically turbulent 2016, who could know what 2017 would hold? We spent the start of the year looking ahead with some trepidation, some anticipation and a good dose of excitement.

Decomposition in the cold. We kicked of a busy year as Haydn and Isla headed on a tour of Denmark and Sweden to attend the Oikos symposium on Decomposition in Cold Biomes (https://globalsoilbiodiversity.org/content/oikos-satellite-symposium). It was appropriate as the temperatures had dropped that week and it was quite snowy and chilly in beautiful Lund, Sweden as we chatted about cold-weather decomposition while cosy inside.

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Taking a tea break in Umeä

To Aberdeen. In March, it was our first Team Shrub trip to Aberdeen. We had a beach coding holiday and attended the Scottish Ecology, Environment and Conservation conference with Gergana, Haydn and Sandra presenting. We teamed up with Francesca Mancini from the Aberdeen Study Group to lead a coding workshop on efficiently analysing and visualising big-ish data in ecology.

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Jumping for joy at the thought of more coding!

Glimpses of our future? By April, we had a wee glimpse into what 2017 might have in store for us through a traditional Bulgarian pastry dish with our fortunes inside!

Tundra Greening and Browning. Also in April, After a lab trip to Durham, Haydn’s home town, to talk permafrost for a day at Durham University. Andy and Isla went to the home of the Crucible, the land of snooker, the (real) region of Robin Hood, and the heartland of the only English football team named after a day of the week. (Also the home of the Arctic Monkeys – who incidentally haven’t spent much time in the Arctic). If you haven’t guessed yet, we went to the town of Sheffield for the ‘Arctic Browning Workshop’. The Arctic is warming and satellites have shown a fair bit of greening, but recent evidence suggests a decrease in the rates of increasing greenness at high latitudes and some browning events. The theme of the workshop was exploring that Arctic browning and what might be causing it.

A trip to the Highlands. Also in April and before the field season, Team Shrub headed to the highlands to show our visiting scholar Jeff Kerby and our summer drone pilot Will Palmer the beautiful countryside in our own backyard.

Traits. In June, Haydn, Anne and Isla headed the deep South of the UK to almost tropical temperatures at the University of Exeter. We were at the New Phytologist 39th Symposium on Trait covariation. Whether in the symposium sessions or out on Dartmoor, we had a great time pondering plant traits from the tropics to the tundra.

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Team Shrub strike out across the Highlands.

The Field Season. Suddenly it was the field season. Team Shrub divided into two teams: Team Drone and Team Kluane to concurrently conduct our data collection on either end of the Yukon. From drones, tea bags, phenology, stories, sounds, smells, feasts, birding, to reunions many adventures were had and a ton of data was collected. We managed to capture over 100,000 images or more than two TB of data with our drones, to dig out over 300 tea bags from the ground, and to fill several field books or iPad spreadsheets with numbers and notes. It was a productive period and we are still working away on processing the data.

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Team Shrub together at last!

New beginnings. This September marked the start of Mariana’s and Gergana’s PhD research. Mariana is modelling how plant species distributions will shift under climate change at two extreme biomes – the tundra and the savannah. Gergana is quantifying the effects of land use change on global and local patterns of species richness, abundance and composition. Sam, Claudia and Matt have joined Team Shrub for their honours dissertations. The data presents will soon be rolling as new student projects come together and our first three Team Shrub PhD students finalise their dissertations over the coming months.

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First day of being a PhD student for Mariana and Gergana!

Coding. Coding Club celebrated its first birthday! Coding is a big part of our work on Team Shrub, we use coding in our research, teaching, our lives in general… where would we be without it. Perhaps a bit less constantly frustrated, but also without those moments of glory when everything runs error free! We even made up a fictional journal for the Conservation Science course that Isla organises and Gergana and Mariana are tutors on. You can find out more about AQMCS (Advanced quantitative methods in conservation science) here – Same data – different results? ConSci 2017 introduces AQMCS!

Conservation in the Cairngorms. In early October, members of Team Shrub took our annual pilgrimage up to the highlands of Scotland for the weekend fieldtrip on the Conservation Science course. With all sorts of weather, mountains, drones, delicious cake and an epic music jam, fun was had by all!

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Learning about conservation in a majestic landscape

Biodiversity, the New North and the science/policy interface. Also in the month of October, along with keen undergraduates from the Conservation Science course, we went along to the Spotlight on Scotland’s Biodiversity conference. For the undergraduates involved, it was their first ever conference. It was pretty inspiring to see the next generation of conservation scientists getting the opportunity to talk with the Scottish experts in the field. A few weeks later in November, we headed to the “Scotland and the New North” policy forum, where Isla got to hold the door for Nicola Sturgeon! A new focus looking Northward for Scotland could mean new things for Team Shrub research in future.

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What will Scotland’s new focus northward mean for Team Shrub?

Also in November, Mariana attended two  policy-related events: the EEB Changing Landscapes conference in Edinburgh and the BES “Understanding science policy in Scotland“ workshop in Stirling. The first was a high-level event where major conservation organisations discussed the future of nature in Europe; while the second zoomed into Scotland to understand how science can feed into the policy-making process.

Writing. In November, Team Shrub had our first official writing retreat. We have been talking about having a writing retreat for years and finally things came together with a chance to focus on our writing goals, away from distractions. We were so inspired that we are planning on having a residential writing retreat sometime in the Spring of 2018 – where we can go from one day of super high productivity to hopefully a long weekend.

Dual Conferences. In December, Team Shrub headed to two big conferences happening at the same time! You can read about our parallel conferences experiences here. At Ecology Across Borders in Ghent, Belgium, Anne, Mariana and Gergana joined over 1500 ecologists to take in lots of exciting science, go to workshops, meet new people or catch up with old friends. Gergana and Anne gave talks, in sessions happening at the same time!

At Ecology Across Borders, we also led a Coding Club workshop, titled “Transferring quantitative skills among ecologists”. We shared our approach to teaching coding to keen participants from the conference. All of our workshop materials are online: Transferring quantitative skills among scientists. You can also check out the Coding Club website to find all of our tutorials as well as information on how you can join our team and organise workshops at your home institution.

The other half of Team Shrub, Isla, Sandra, Haydn, Jakob, Andy and Jeff went to Quebec in Canada for the penultimate ArcticNet meeting – Arctic Change 2017. You can check out the daily round-up blog posts about the conference here – day 1, day 2, day 3 and days 4 and 5. A pinnacle moment for Team Shrub was Haydn and Jakob winning the top two prizes from the conference elevator pitch contest!

Rejections. When we drafted our goals for 2017, we also set out our rejection goals. The idea behind rejection goals is that if we never get rejected, then maybe we aren’t aiming high enough. We decided to collectively aim for 50 rejections. So how did we do? We counted 23 rejections out of our goal of 50. Now perhaps we didn’t manage to count every single rejection this year, some of them we would rather just forget, but can we count the fact that we didn’t achieve our rejections as one additional fail?  Then technically we are at 24 out of 50?

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Team Drone on Qikiqtaruk – Herschel Island in the Northern Yukon.

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Team Kluane at Outpost Station in the Southern Yukon.

Outreach. At Our Dynamic Earth, we shared the excitement of using drones for science. At the Edinburgh Science Festival, we explored art as a way to communicate science. We put together the photography exhibit “Arctic from Above” and developed collaborations with Simon Sloan, Archie Crofton to explore how art and data interface and ASCUS looking at tundra shrubs as time machines. Then at Curiosity forest, part of Explorathon 2017, we used drone simulators and cool dendrochronology samples to learn about how to study Arctic change.

There were also many jolly meals and trips to the pub. Many heated debates as we discussed science in lab meeting or over lunch. There were many moments of coding frustration followed by a sense of achievement as we worked through our scientific goals.

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One of many lab meetings!

So those were some of the Adventures for Team Shrub in 2017.

What will 2018 hold? We already have some exciting things to share with you over the coming months, and many more in the pipeline. Hopefully we will also have some fantastically fluffy catkins this year: keep your eye on the breeze.

So from all on Team Shrub, a very happy new year and we look forward to sharing with you, working with you, and learning from you in the year to come.

By Gergana, Isla and Haydn

Arctic Change 2017 – Wednesday round-up

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Another day of snow in Quebec City, another day of Arctic conferencing at Arctic Change 2017. Another packed plenary, hearing from Larry Hinzman on how we can and must adapt as not only the climate changes, but many other factors as well. We heard the fascinating, and certainly complex debate around the ownership and use of the northwest passage. Finally, we stood together to celebrate the work of Dr. Michel Allard, winner of this year’s Weston Family Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Northern Research.

Team Shrub was well represented in the first session of Monitoring, Modeling and Predicting Arctic Biodiversity. Isla made a convincing case for detection of various components of vegetation change and their attribution to warming. Jeff then demonstrated the scaling issues we have when going from ground-based to satellite observations – impressing the audience with drone footage at the same time.

In this session we also heard from Paul Grogan of Queens University with a fascinating talk on birch expansion driven by a decrease in herbivory rather than by increased temperatures. Last up was Pascale Ropars (who first taught me the art of digging shrubs up many years ago), presenting a whole-food-web approach to predicting biodiversity change in Northern Québec.

After a delicious lunch (the food here!) which peaked with three helpings of profiteroles, it was time to go back to the second part of the Arctic Biodiversity session. Katriina O’Kane showed us how species move individually rather than as a community during succession at a glacier’s edge. Cory Wallace and Jennifer Baltzer from the Forest Ecology Research Group at Wilfrid-Laurier also took us on a tour of alder shrubs, topographic variation, and the factors controlling black spruce abundance.

Finally, eyes starting to itch and brains hurting from a day packed full of new knowledge, we heard from Caroline Coch on the role of small catchments for dissolved organic carbon inputs, and from Dustin Whalen on how drones are being used to map coastal erosion in the Arctic.

Isla giving her talk
Arctic friendships! Chanda and I met in Inuvik, then at ArcticNet in Winnipeg, then again!
Cameron Eckert, our favourite Yukon biologist, (gently) quizzing Jakob on his poster

Haydn, Jakob and myself were still on duty by our posters in the evening. Between lively scientific discussions and running into old friends, the two hours flew by and our team set out hungrily in search of poutine. Unfortunately, my insider knowledge of Québec didn’t extend to knowing Ashton’s opening hours, so the door shut in our disappointed faces. We had to turn to (highly satisfying) falafels eaten on the street in -10 degrees C weather to get back to the conference centre in time for the first screening of Breaking Ice, a documentary that took us on the Canadian research ice-breaker the Amundsen.

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I suspect Haydn, Jakob, Isla and Andy are in various stages of anticipation for their Thursday talks. Good luck all!

By Sandra

Arctic Change 2017 – Tuesday round-up: Blizzards, Biodiversity and Beluga Snot

| teamshrub

The second day of Arctic Change 2017 hit town like the snow storm raging outside the Centre des congrès de Québec. Today the main hall was full, packed right to the edges, as we were welcomed by ArcticNet, Laval University and the Inuit Circumpolar Council.

After the welcome and official opening, Raleigh Seamster from Google Earth, and Joel Heath and Lucassie Arragutainaq from ArcticEider/SIKU demonstrated the power of remote sensing and its potential for community based environmental monitoring in the Arctic. The speakers clearly had to battle the inquisitiveness of researchers as hundreds reached straight for their laptops and phones to immediately check out these awesome tools! Louis Frontier, scientific director of ArcticNet, followed with a reminder that cutting carbon emissions remains paramount for tackling all issues around Climate Change. Anyone not from Norway or Paraguay might have left feeling a little bruised, but despite the world being only 5% of the way towards its renewable goals, there was still a sense of optimism. And indeed, the plenary closed with optimism in full swing with a touching short film on the Schools on Board project of the Canadian research icebreaker Amundsen and the potential future leaders of Arctic policy change.

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Google Earth Timelapse, winding back time on Qikiqtaruk – Herschel Island our Arctic research site.

Refreshed after heaps of pastries and coffee, the conference headed into the first topical sessions. Alas, we can barely scratch the surface of the vast array of talks on offer here. Justine Hudson method’s of assessing Hudson’s Bay’s beluga whale stress level using snot samples was much discussed on twitter and made an engaging talk with videos of curious belugas “donating” their snot to science. Memorable also were Benjamin Lange’s findings that multiyear sea-ice supports much more algae life than first year ice. We on Team Shrub appreciated hearing about Zoe Panchen’s research on tundra plant phenology showing that microclimate matters more than latitude or elevation for flowering in the Canadian High Arctic.  And Team Shrub was also a fan of Esther Frei’s work on plant trait change over time and her beautiful figures!  We also really liked pondering future fox housing using Florence Poulin’s new index of Arctic fox den vulnerability.

The scientific part of the day concluded with the first poster session, with legions of well designed posters (every conference should have such a great reward for poster awesomeness!) and an astonishing amount of great science. Ruminating in front of our fake log fire we remember Jeffery Saarela and Paul Sokoloff’s enthusiastic poster presentation – working with the Canadian’s Museum of Nature, they are sampling plants all across the Arctic islands to improve our understanding of high Arctic biodiversity. Also sticking out was Sarah Shakil’s poster on chemical composition of slump discharge on the Peal Plateau in the Yukon and Christine Anderson’s beautiful poster about her exciting proposed PhD research on shorebirds in a changing Arctic.

Let shrubs take you back in time to battles beneath the ground. Sandra and her beautiful poster
Jakob stoked about presenting tundra phenology change.

Now we are all tired from a long day of sciencing, talking at our posters, braving the still raging blizzard and running away from snow-spitting Quebecois snow ploughs on our way home to the apartment. After two exciting days, we’re looking forward the great Arctic science to come and take up Allen Pope’s challenge to kick him off the top of the twitter leader board. So keep your twitter ears pricked and see you tomorrow!

 

Team Shrub on the way home through the snow.
Piles of snow outside the conference centre.

by Jakob and Team Shrub

p.s. You can also catch up here on what’s happening across the pond at the the Ecology Across Borders conference in Ghent.

Phenology Today

| teamshrub

Phenology Today
A semi-weekly periodical about the reproductive lives and growth of tundra plants on Qikiqtaruk – Herschel Island.

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The pretty white petals of Dryas integrifolia or mountain avens.

A lone white petal on a Dryas (mountain avens) flower resists today’s wind, keeping its status as the last remaining open flower in our phenology plots. An increasing trend of flower seed heads, made up of intricately twisting filaments, can be observed across all sites. Arctic willows continue to grow, but no seed catkins have open yet to reveal their fluffy seed.

The breeze stirs up the gossip among the grasses: who is reproducing, when and where? What will today bring for phenology on Qikiqtaruk? Providing you with all the latest updates on flower blooming, plant growth, seed dispersal and all things phenology, this is Phenology Today!

On the 5th July 70 Dryas flowers fill a single 1x1m plot. Eleven days later, only 4 remain. Summer comes and goes quickly in the Arctic. By the time this news reaches you, there might not be any white Dryas blossoms left – all replaced by twisting seed heads. No seed heads have unfurled so far, and we have yet to record Dryas seed dispersal. But certainly, with the inevitable passing of time, dispersal will happen.  After all, winter is coming…

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The elegant twisting filaments of Dryas integrifolia or mountain avens.

Isla’s arrival marks the resolution of a month-long quest to quantify the level of fluffiness of Eriophorum (cottongrass) flowers. Precisely when does fluffiness start to decrease? It will signify the end, the end of the flowering period and beginning of seed dispersal. Gergana and Isla have visited all phenology plots, and in a shocking twist of events, we now report that some flowers are fluffier than initially perceived by Gergana. More seed dispersal is bound to happen soon. Until then, we shall be standing by continuing to measure leaf length, waiting for the incessant winds to start carrying off Eriophorum seeds.

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The fluffy flowers of Eriophorum vaginatum also known as cottongrass.

How high will the grass species, Arctagrostis latifolia, grow? We visit twice a week, reveal ing a whooping maximum height of 43.1cm so far this year! That’s tall!  There is pollen visible on some flowers, but for now grass seed dispersal seems to be a distant future that we can only but imagine.

Around this time last year Team Shrub was wishing upon willow flowers to bring good weather to both blow away the mosquitos and hasten the arrival of the second half of our crew. Today, very few willow catkins have released their fluffy seeds into the wind in the phenology plots, hindering wish making. The willows are still steadily growing though, surprising us with larger and larger lengths of new stem growth.  How much will they grow this year? Only time can tell.

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The sturdy Salix arctica (arctic willow) flower dispersing seeds.

Thanks to a team effort in eating small pots of yoghurts, we have successfully manufactured new radiation shields for the iButtons on the phenology plots. What can temperature sensors, ground observations and drones tell us about phenological changes? Check out the ShrubTundra project to find out more.

This is Team Drone reporting for Phenology Today from Qikiqtaruk – Herschel Island. And remember, you heard it here first.

By Gergana and Isla