North of 61 and standing by on channel 69

July 7, 2024July 7, 2024 | imyerssmith

It’s been 18 days on an Arctic island and just over a month above 60°North. Team Shrub has faced every element, from sub-zero temperatures to Arctic heat, storms, bugs and wildlife. But, what brings us North? In this blog post, we will introduce you to our Team Shrub crew, give you insight into this year’s research, and bring you along on our adventures so far in the field season.

Midnight sun in Kluane. Photo by Alex Beauchemin (left). Midnight sun on Qikiqtaruk. Photo by Isla Myers-Smith (right).

As the North continues to experience a rapidly changing climate, extreme weather events are predicted to increase in frequency, fundamentally altering the lives of plants, animals and ultimately people. Team Shrub is working to understand how tundra ecosystems are responding to these changes. This summer’s research will help us figure out how the above and below-ground responses of tundra plant communities ripple across food webs to insects, birds, and mammals, and how Arctic heatwaves reshape permafrost landscapes. What will a later summer – in contrast to recent years -mean for the timing of plant and animal life here on Qikiqtaruk and down in Kluane? Only time will tell. Stay tuned to find out.

*Qikiqtaruk – Herschel Island from the air on a sunny evening in late June. Photo by Ciara Norton.*

This summer, we’re launching the fieldwork of the Canada Excellence Research Chair on ‘The Global Ecology of Northern Ecosystems’, continuing our work on the NERC TundraTime project, the RESILIENCE Synergy grant, the Porcupine Caribou Knowledge Hub Project, and beginning the field asset collection for National Geographic Society Funded ‘Communicating Arctic climate change impacts using immersive virtual reality’.

This past year saw the transition of Team Shrub from the University of Edinburgh to the University of British Columbia. Led by Isla, this year’s field crew consists of three undergraduate students, three recent graduates and two masters students who will join the team in July. With many in Team Shrub new to the Canadian Territories and the Arctic, the extended hours of summer daylight and cooler temperatures of Northern life are a first-in-a-lifetime experience. Once again, this year’s field crew is split between Team Southern Shrub, in the Kluane Lake Region, and Team Northern Shrub, on Qikiqtaruk – Herschel Island.

*Group photo of everyone on the Kluane Plateau in early June except Alex (the photographer) and Isla (back at camp). Photo by Alex Beauchemin.*

Tundra Time

Capturing tundra phenology above and below ground in a warming Tundra

This is the final field season of the Tundra Time project. This project takes place at both of our field sites on either side of the Yukon Territory. In Kluane and on Qikiqtaruk, we’ve got the phenocams all set up to measure the timing of plant growth across the summer. And, in the coming days we will be removing the first of this summer’s in-growth cores to measure the timing of root growth below ground. With two teams working at two sites, our work on this project can progress in tandem. If you want to get a sneak peak of the results of this project, check out Elise’s (Dr. Elise Gallois, that is) new preprint ‘Tundra vegetation community, not microclimate, controls asynchrony of above and belowground phenology’.

*Park Rangers Gina and Phillip collecting phenology data on the long-term monitoring transect. Photo by Isla Myers-Smith.*

KLUANE LAKE – Team Southern Shrub

Team Southern Shrub consists of Anya and Lauren, both recent UBC Environmental Science and Sustainability graduates. Before joining the team, Anya has three seasons of tundra field experience under her belt and Lauren has done participated in climate change research and advocacy.

At Kluane Lake, the common garden experiment continues for an eleventh year. Common garden experiments involve collecting plant individuals from geographically differentiated populations and growing them together under shared conditions. Set up by Team Shrub in 2013, the Kluane Lake common garden is used to determine the growth rates of three key willow species driving alpine and Arctic shrubification (Arctic willow – Salix arctica, Richard’s willow – Salix richardsonii and Diamond Leaf willow – Salix pulchra) under warmer climate conditions than where their source populations were located.

Team Shrub on the Kluane Plateau. Photo by Ciara Norton (left). Anya and Lauren on the top of the Plateau. Photo by Lauren Moody (right).

Arctic shrubs from Qikiqtaruk – Herschel Island (70°N) and alpine shrubs from the Kluane Plateau (61°N) were transplanted into the warmer environment of the Kluane Lake Region, well within the boreal forest – an environment which experiences summer temperatures 3-5ºC warmer than either source environment. The common garden helps inform predictions of shrub growth and phenology as the climate warms. Do willows grow longer and larger under warmer conditions? Or is willow growth restricted by genetic adaptation to local environments?

Willows across the growing season in the Common Garden Experiment in 2021. Video by Team Shrub.

On the Kluane Plateau, we are studying patterns of seed predation along an elevational gradient and contributing to a cross-continental study spanning the Americas. How do patterns of seed predation vary with elevation and latitude? We’re carrying out the protocols at the northernmost site in this experiment to find out. Preliminary findings confirm that seeds are eaten to a greater extent at lower latitudes, indicating greater pressures on plant reproduction towards the equator versus at higher latitudes.

*The Kluane Range Mountains in the Southern Yukon. Photo by Elias Bowman.*

PikARU Project

Monitoring Pika Abundance with Autonomous Recording Units

Undergraduate thesis student Charlotte will be joining the Arctic crew for the first Qikiqtaruk trip before migrating to Kluane for the remainder of the field season. New this year for the Kluane team is the PikARU Project, led by Charlotte in collaboration with the Environmental Sustainability division of the Government of Yukon. Collared pikas (Ochotona collaris) are small mammals that have been designated a species of Special Concern by COSEWIC due to their sensitivity to environmental change.

Pikas are the inspiration for Pikachu, hence the project title “PikARU.” Shrubification may pose risks to the species because it has the potential to remove their preferred forage plants – forbs and graminoids – but the population-level response of pikas to vegetation change is unknown. Our crew will use autonomous recording units (ARUs) to study collared pikas in the Southern and Central Yukon, capturing the small mammal’s “meep”-sounding vocalizations. This will give us an idea of the abundance of pikas at each of our research sites. Could ARUs be a key tool for monitoring pika population health over time as they experience the effects of a changing environment?

*A collared pika sits on a talus rock in the Southern Yukon. Photo by Cameron Eckert.*

QIKIQTARUK – Team Northern Shrub

In the Arctic, it’s been a chilly start to the 2024 field season. After the exceptionally warm summer of 2023 in the western Arctic, spring of 2024 was marked by the highest June sea ice cover along the North Slope of the Yukon in over two decades. We’ve been surrounded by sea ice for the first weeks of our field season. The cooler temperatures are atypical, and spring is around three weeks later than in recent years.

The sea ice surrounding Qikiqtaruk in June. Videography by Ciara Norton.

Up in the Arctic, Team Northern Shrub is continuing its monitoring of tundra plant responses to climate change. We’re using long-term plots to monitor changes to plant traits, phenology, and community structure. We’re also continuing the upkeep of our muskox-beloved phenocams. In recent days, the temperatures have warmed. The snow has been melting, the sea ice is moving offshore and summer has arrived. To keep up with the changing seasons, we’ve been running around the tundra capturing the timing of plant growth and pollinator and bird activity with wildlife cams, autonomous recording units and phenocams.

Here on Qikiqtaruk, with the delayed summer, early season plants are only just starting to flower. These Arctic gems are rare sights, often having already completed their life cycle by the time Team Shrub arrives. Being here for the very start of spring means that this year, we can capture the full summer cycles of flowering plants, pollinators and birds. Will the remainder of the growing season be pushed back due to the later spring, or will plant phenology catch up? Only time will tell.

A pollinator camera aka TURTLE, or Tetrapodal Underside Recorder-Trailcam Linkages for Ecoaccoustics, successfully installed on Qikiqtaruk. Are they muskox proof? We’ll have to wait and see. Photo by Isla Myers-Smith.

Tundra THAW Project

Tundra Terrain Hazards From Arctic Warming

Heat events associated with climate change have led to massive disturbance events in permafrost landscapes. In July of 2023, an extreme heat event on Qikiqtaruk led to the formation of over 700 landslides across the island. These landslides are called active layer detachments (ALDs) and occur when dramatic permafrost thaw triggers the active layer of the tundra to slide downslope. These landslides have left dramatic scars on the landscape spanning across the island.

*East Gully Creek flows out into the ocean in June 2024 on Qikiqtaruk. Photo by Ciara Norton.*

Qikiqtaruk is also home to one of the largest retrogressive thaw slumps (RTSs) in the world, another form of mass movement which results from permafrost degradation. The incoming research data coordinator, Ciara, is leading a project that monitors permafrost disturbance across the island, through both mapping the progression of the RTSs and ALDs over the summer and characterizing their morphologies. What drives the occurrence of active layer disturbance events, and how do active layer detachments progress over time? Will the ALDs progress into RTSs?

*An Active Layer Detachment that formed in August 2023 thaws out of the snow pack in June 2024. Photo Ciara Norton.*

Tundra BUZZ Project

Tundra Bumblebee Unoccupied Study of Zoophily Through Zooacoustics

Plant-pollinator interactions are a key part of Arctic food webs. Insect pollinators fertilize plants, allowing them to develop fruits and set seed. Berries feed wildlife, from migratory birds to muskoxen and caribou. Without pollinators, Arctic life would not exist in the way that we know it.

As tundra plant phenology shifts forward under a warming Arctic, how does pollinator phenology change? Is shrubification reshaping pollinator communities? The Tundra BUZZ Project aims to uncover the workings of Arctic responses to climate change at the insect scale. Undergraduate thesis student Alex will be investigating bumblebee activity and phenology in relation to plant flowering time through the use of ecoacoustics and wildlife cameras.

The TURTLE setup used by the Tundra BUZZ experiment and the BANQUISE Project on Qikiqtaruk (left). A bumblebee of the Arctic subgenus Alpinobombus covered in pollen from Salix richardsonii (right). Photos by Alex Beauchemin.

BANQUISE Project

Bird Abundance and Nesting on Qikiqtaruk Under Icey Seasonal Environments

Every year, birds flock to Qikiqtaruk – Herschel Island in the thousands to forage and breed. Climate change impacts which species, how many individuals and when birds are arriving and nesting on the island. Snowmelt date has been documented as a primary driver of bird and plant phenology, while sea ice dynamics also play an important role (see former Team Shrubber Meagan’s research!).

For birds on Qikiqtaruk, every variable plays just one part in a complicated story determining their life histories. Using historic and modern records, Elias is quantifying direct and indirect impacts of environmental variables on bird abundance and nesting timing. With the addition of audio recorders and wildlife cameras to existing observations within the park, Elias will be able to tease apart how breeding birds are responding to the warming Arctic.

A Lapland Longspur calls in front of an audio recording TURTLE device. Photo by Elias Bowman (left). Savannah sparrow chicks in their nest on Qikiqtaruk – Herschel Island. Photo by Isla Myers-Smith (right).

Masters students Sarah and Micah will be joining the team later in the field season. Sarah will be studying drivers of borealization in Kluane while Micah will be focused on flooding on Qikiqtaruk. Stay tuned for updates on their projects later in the summer.

As we work away on our research, we will also collect imagery, video, sound and 360 visuals to capture this rapidly changing tundra environment. These assets will contribute to the next phase of our National Geographic Society funded project ‘Communicating Arctic climate change impacts using immersive virtual reality’. We’ve recently launched a website for this project, and we’re keen to figure out how best to share Arctic climate change impacts through virtual reality.

The tundra in 3D. These visuals were produced using drone data and animation as a part of the National Geographic Society Meridian Grant ‘Communicating Arctic climate change impacts using immersive virtual reality’. Visuals by Ivar Studios and the project team.

For more information on how climate change is altering Arctic and alpine ecosystems across the Yukon, keep an eye out for more Team Shrub blog posts this summer!

Signal’s House standing by on channel six nine in the Canadian Arctic.

Words by Alex, Charlotte, Elias, Ciara, Anya, Lauren and Isla

*Signal’s House, our island home, from the air on a foggy day in June. Photo by Ciara Norton.*

Team Shrub’s 2022 journey to the Yukon

June 24, 2022June 27, 2022 | 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)

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)

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)

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)

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 Proje ct 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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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

From the ground to the sky: fieldwork in Kluane

August 2, 2018August 26, 2018 | gndaskalova

Roaming the common garden

Over the last five years, the common garden in Kluane has allowed us to collect data on the growth of different willow species from across Canada. This experiment enables us to better understand how plants grow in a warmer climate. Over the start of this summer, which has been particularly hot in Kluane, we have continued smothering our plants with love by fertilizing and watering them so they would allow us to take all sorts of measurements on them – including phenology, new growth, leaf length and canopy height.

Here we have “Izzy Rich”, the garden bed named after our 2017 field assistant Izzy!

A majestic setting for our shrubs to grow in!

Measuring leaves in the dusty garden

At the moment, one Salix richardsonii individual is the tallest plant in the garden at 156 cm, which makes it the king or queen of the (Arctic) jungle! We will be back in August though so there is still time for other plants to have a go at dethroning it. A close-up view of our willows is spectacular, but I have to say that looking up every once in a while from callipers and measuring tapes and seeing the majestic mountains surrounding Kluane lake does not get old – this is truly is a magical place.

By Mariana

Climbing up mountains

Behind our experiment at the shores of Kluane Lake rise the mountains that gives us a chance to step, in just a few hours, into the tundra. Aside from the abundance of shrubs, grasses and beautiful alpine flowers that are our primary attraction to these climes, we have also over the last few years been helping Anna Hargreaves to examine patterns of herbivory. Laying out seeds and cages, we keep an eye out for critters and flutters, picking and scratching, and most often of all, the scraping of teeth and piles of poo that signify a small mammal has found our caches. This year we have added fake caterpillars to expand the repertoire of munching mementos. All went well with putting out the seeds, though it turned out the fake caterpillars were hard to work with in the summer heat! But we managed. Either way, the birds didn’t seem overly keen – only one, maybe three, caterpillars got pecked. Whatever the task, it hardly matters once atop the mountains: the views are reliably beautiful!

To find out more:

Hargreaves, A., Suarez, E., Mehltreter, K., Myers-Smith, I., Vanderplank, S.E., Slinn, H.L., Vargas-Rodriguez, Y.L., Haeussler, S., David, S., Munoz, J. and Almazan-Nunoz, R.C., 2018. Seed predation increases from the Arctic to the Equator and from high to low elevations. bioRxiv, p.304634.

A successful climb up the mountain!

Our highest site at 1816m!

Beautiful views along our elevational gradient

By Gergana (and Haydn)

Flying drones

Drones! We still have them, none have broken yet. The main task of our test flights while in Kluane was adding the Sequoia multi-spec sensor to the DJI Phantom 4 Pro (editor’s note: for non-drone folks I think that means ‘added a cool camera to a mini helicopter’). The flights were a success with slight glitches that have been corrected by now. The only casualty during our flight operations were my ankles which were not properly protected from the mosquitoes during the first flight at dusk. If anything it was a proper introduction to the bugs that we’ll face while on Qikiqtaruk-Herschel Island. Once all flights were completed, we carried five gallon buckets from the lake to water the community garden through herds of black flies.

Yes, I was sore the next morning.

By Noah

Exploring – from the ground to the sky!

In between measuring leaves, counting seeds and flying drones, we also got to explore the icefields near Kluane – a magical experience! Our favourites included the super high mountains, the rich turquoise colour of the little pools among the ice, and just the all around grandeur of the place. Majestical, as the movie Hunt for the Wilderpeople would put it.

Sophie and Mariana on the icefields

Beautiful views of snowcapped mountain peaks

We all loved the deep shades of turquoise!

We continued the Team Shrub tradition of a barefoot icefield run – refreshingly brisque! It was quite the contrast to feel the heat of the sun and the chill of the ice at the same time.

The Team Shrub barefoot icefield run!

Majestic views

The cool plane that got us to the icefields@

We are now off to Qikiqtaruk-Herschel Island for the next, longer stretch of our field season! In less than two hours, us and many boxes are scheduled to depart for Qikiqtaruk. Oh the adventure that lies ahead…we can’t wait!

By Gergana, Mariana and Noah

Shrub surveillance

July 26, 2017August 30, 2017 | teamshrub

One of my first tasks as the Kluane Research Assistant was to set up phenocams in the common garden experiment. Phenocams, or more generally time lapse cameras, take pictures every hour to create a video of what has happened over time. Differences in the timing of life events (phenology) – things like when leaves appear or die – are probably one of the biggest drivers of the difference in growth we are seeing between willow populations. With phenocams we can now track this throughout the whole year!

My first step was to unbox them, which, I have to say was the most time consuming! I was to put up 12 cameras around the garden to monitor certain plots, with another one going to be put in a tree to get an aerial view.

After all was unboxed, it was time for the set-up. The instructions were very clear and allowed for the cameras to be customized to our liking. I inputted the time and date and chose the name for each camera. This information will be displayed at the bottom of each picture when the whole video comes together. Being able to name each camera makes it very easy to differentiate between each camera, especially when we have so many!

Once the set-ups for all cameras was complete, I headed over to the common garden to put them up. Team Drone, who stopped in Kluane earlier this summer, thankfully put up the posts where I was to attach the cameras. At first I wasn’t too sure how I’d be able to set them up but thankfully each camera came with a connecting band and clasp that I found was long and strong enough to attach each camera securely. The outcome looks pretty good and hopefully the final resulting images will too!

By Izzy

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Our phenocams were purchased thanks to a Dudley Stamp Memorial Award from the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG).

Phenology Today

July 25, 2017August 30, 2017 | teamshrub

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

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 5^th 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…

DSCN1568 — 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.

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.

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

The turning of the seasons

July 24, 2017August 30, 2017 | teamshrub

It’s a hot day. The sun is beating down on the damp ground, freshly cleared of melted snow, and beneath the wet surface the ice begins to retreat.

Nothing too unusual, except that it’s the middle of April, and our field site is an island off the Arctic coast of Canada. Thirty years or so previously things would still have been buried under a thick blanket of winter snow, but as the Arctic heats up, spring is advancing.

One of the big questions we are trying to answer is how an earlier spring alters tundra plants. Are they flowering earlier? Does that mean growing seasons are longer? What about different species, do some do better than others? Are there knock-on effects for pollinators, birds, caribou? Can we predict how things will change in the future?

All big questions, all with big consequences for the shape and colour, the sights and smells, the ebb and flow of life for plants, animals and people alike in these cold northern lands. We are faced with one big problem though: come the spring, there’s no-one yet around to measure anything.

But, to butcher a quote, we have a cunning plan. Three, in fact.

1. Eyes in the sky

While we may still be enjoying the cherry blossom on the Meadows and the blustery showers blowing in from the North Sea in April, our field sites are still being watched from above. Satellites give us a great deal of information, all year round, that we can use to track the timing of life (phenology) across the Arctic.

QHI 2017-07-07 TERRA True Colour Composite — Qikiqtaruk locked up in sea ice this spring

One approach is to use the ‘normalised difference vegetation index’ (or NDVI for short) to measure the ‘greenness’ of the landscape as the spring unfolds. That works well enough, but the resolution is coarse, and clouds are causing a lot of trouble (no data) particularly in the cloudy summers of the Arctic.

Part of our research aims to link satellite data with ground-based observations. We do this using drones to collect high-resolution imagery and NDVI measurements at the landscape level: ‘bridging the gap’ between coarse resolution images from space, and very detailed monitoring data from small-scale vegetation plots. This way we get a much better understanding of what is going on when we’re not at our field sites, and at all the other places around the Arctic we will never get the chance to visit.

2. Boots on the ground

One of our local breweries has recently started a series called ‘Advancement Through Collaboration‘, teaming up all sorts of different groups to create something new. We try to take the same approach to our own science, whether it is sharing data and ideas with other Arctic researchers around the world, or creating artwork out of shrub rings.

When it comes to phenology, we are incredibly lucky to be able to collaborate with Yukon Parks rangers on Qikiqtaruk – folks who not only welcome us to their lands each summer, but provide insight into the changes in the tundra in ways we never could. Three times each week from late April to early September, every year since 2001, the rangers make the half an hour hike up to sets of long-term monitoring plots to record life stages in three tundra species. They diligently record when their first leaves appear, when they flower, and when they die. Overall, this is one of the longest continuous phenology monitoring datasets in the tundra!

SAB-6079 — Checking up on the long-term phenology plots with Ricky-Joe and Sam

With data like this, we can track how plants are responding to change in much more detail. We can also compare different species: are there winners and losers? And we have the data to link things across scale: the information to build the bridge up from individual plants to the whole biome.

Gergana and Will collecting detailed growth and phenology measurements

3. Fly on the wall

It’s never going to pull in the TV audiences of Big Brother, but a bunch of 24 hour cameras trained on Arctic plants really floats our boat. Last year we installed a couple of phenocams – basically time-lapse cameras – to track in more detail how plant communities are changing over the growing season.

This year we were fortunate enough to secure some additional funding from the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) to expand the project. Hugely exciting for us, we will now be able to track vegetation communities across the island, scaling up our findings from the long-term monitoring plots to the landscape scale.

A phenocam standing tall above the Arctic tundra on Qikiqtaruk

Even more exciting, we are using the cameras to link differences in phenology across the Arctic through our ‘common garden’ experiment in the south of the Yukon. Here we have planted willows collected from across the Yukon to examine whether different populations will respond to change in different ways. One of the biggest differences we have seen so far is that northern populations seem to stick to their ‘home’ growing season: they leaf out late and senesce early compared to southern individuals of the same species growing just 50cm away.

Southern Salix richardsonoo

Northern Salix richardsonoo

Does the difference in senescence timing explain the difference in growth in these two willows? Willows are of the same species, collected as cuttings in 2013 from a southern tundra site (left) and northern tundra site (right).

At present we can only track phenology changes in the garden thanks to input from more wonderful collaborators – Sian Williams and the folks from Icefield Discovery working down at Kluane Lake. With our new phenocams we can for the first time track differences in phenology over the whole year, not just in our experiment, but at the sites where willows were collected! We think this is the last piece in the puzzle to be able to answer exactly what is going on – whether willows have responded to new conditions, or whether their genes mean that old habits die hard. Our phenocams in the common garden are now installed, and we’ll be installing the remainder at our remote field sites as soon as the summer expeditions get underway. Watch this space!

By Haydn

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Haydn is the recipient of a Dudley Stamp Memorial Award on behalf of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG).

Phenology Week

July 24, 2017August 27, 2017 | teamshrub

This week on Team Shrub we are focusing entirely on one aspect of change in the tundra: phenology.

What is phenology?

Phenology (or “fun-ology” as my wife calls it) is, to put it simply, when things happen. It is the timing of life events.

As a PhD student, gazing out of the office window instead of writing up my thesis, phenology is what keeps the view interesting – when the leaves appear in spring, when the birds hatch, when the berries appear on my walk home, and when the trees turn auburn to mark the end of the year.

As a tundra ecologist, phenology offers a way to track the huge changes we are seeing as the Arctic warms. We track when things happen in our study ecosystems – when the snow melts, the leaf buds burst, the flowers appear, and the leaves begin to turn.

Why phenology?

Monitoring the timing of life gives us a great deal of information that can shed light on how the tundra is changing, how fast, and what it might look like in the future.

For example, we can use phenology to see whether we are seeing an earlier spring, or longer growing seasons for tundra plants.

We can look at if plants can keep up with earlier snowmelt – and if the birds and the bees can keep up with the plants.

We can look at winners and losers: if some species respond to changes while others don’t, and if that tells us anything about community change in the tundra.

And we can look a little deeper still at whether phenology is somehow ingrained, tied to the genetics of an individual or a species, or whether it can respond to the rapid environmental changes going on in the Arctic.

What’s in store this week?

This week we have five posts focusing on the different ways we measure and monitor phenology at our field sites.

On Monday Haydn will look at the ways we can monitor phenology in the Arctic, even when there’s no-one around.
On Tuesday, Isla and Gergana keep you up to speed with the latest phenology gossip at our northern field site on Qikiqtaruk – Herschel Island.
On Wednesday, Izzy introduces you to our new phenocams at our southern field site, and the excitement of opening a box.
~~Thursday, and we’re up in the skies with Isla to find out how we use drones to measure Arctic vegetation change~~ Oops. Sometimes the sat phone is acting up, so here are some cool time lapse videos instead. UPDATE: We are finally up in the skies!
And finally Friday, the one I am most looking forward to, where we will hear from the Yukon Parks Rangers who visit our phenology plots over the whole ice-free season. Wait for it. It’s coming up and it’s really good. UPDATE: First, from ranger Ricky Joe – Changes on Qikiqtaruk: Perspectives from Ranger Ricky Joe. Soon we will hear from ranger Edward McLeod as well!

So settle in, reach for the popcorn, and get ready for a wild, wild week of science.

Haydn

Fieldwork Milestones

July 20, 2017August 30, 2017 | teamshrub

The icy waters that welcomed us to Qikiqtaruk are long gone – past are the beautiful sunsets with light reflecting off big chunks of ice, and instead we now see dark blue or grey waters and occasionally even beluga whales swimming by. It’s a great time of the summer, with some flowers still in bloom, while others are setting seeds. The sandpiper and plover chicks are growing up, and we have been spending lots of time out in the field – through sunshine, wind and fog, the data are rolling in!

Now that we have already celebrated our two week and three weekiversaries on the island and are approaching a month on the island, we thought we’d reflect on our fieldwork milestones so far!

21^st June

We celebrated solstice by arriving on the island, checking out the vast expanse of sea ice in the water and exploring our home for the summer and all the breeding bird species with Park Biologist Cameron Eckert.

1^stJuly (Happy Canada Day!)

Canada Day dinner with the rangers – for some of us it was our first Canada Day ever and it was the big 150 this year, and we all had a great time sharing stories and enjoying a tasty feast on a day celebrating the confederation of peoples including all the original people of this vast country.

2^nd July

Wildlife sightings – some of our favourites include a herd of 25 caribou with calves, the four majestic muskoxen, a short-eared owl flying over camp, black guillemots riding the waves, waders dashing around on the spit, and belugas and bowheads off the cliffs from Collinson Head (14^thJuly).

4^th July (Happy Independence Day!)

Six new phenocams are all set up and hopefully well enough to resist any muskox encounters (none so far)! It will be great to see all the photos stitched together at the end of the season from May to August, thanks to the rangers setting things up for us before we arrived. The ongoing on-the-ground phenology observations have also been no less exciting, though they are a bit more of a pain to collect when the mosquitos are at their most ferocious like yesterday!

6^th July

The first twisting of the filaments of the Dryas (mountain avens) in our phenology monitoring! We’ve also been counting how many flowers there are in each of the phenology plots and we are now past peak flower time – now there will be fewer and fewer pretty coloured flowers, but watching the Dryas seed heads develop and twist round and round and the fluffy flowers of the Eriophorum take flight is beautiful too!

7^th July

A Team Shrub record for largest area surveyed with drones in one day – 3,000,000 meters squared. We now have 193,735 images (as of 15th July) and counting for this field season so far. As soon as the winds die down the drones are out – with three pilots in the field, there has been lots of drone action – different drones, different scales of investigation, different spectral bands, which together will hopefully give us a comprehensive view of vegetation change across the tundra.

8^th July

Our first group photo (minus Isla who hasn’t arrived yet)! Team Drone surrounded by tundra flowers and arctic willows.

10^thJuly

A milestone in the making – surveying all of our sites with GNSS (a type of GPS system) – a super precise way to know exactly where all of our markers and plots are. Around a week ago, we met with representatives of Canada Parks and it was very cool to learn that they also use GNSS technology when mapping historical sites – always interesting to see how people use the same technology in different ways.

11^th July

Perhaps the most exciting milestone of all (at least for Isla): Isla has arrived!!! I have finally made it to the island after five days of trying. Finally, on Tuesday the 11^th of July my float plane successfully touched down in Pauline Cove as a seal curiously watched on. Most amazing of all was that the “freshies” the fresh fruit and vegetables that had been sitting in a hot plane for more than two days were actually for the most part fine and still as fresh and delicious as vegetables tend to be in the North.

14^th July (Happy Bastille Day!)

Another Team Shrub record of 50 drone flights in one day! And, the excitement of finding a two-way radio in the tundra, several days after it was last seen.

15^th July

Active layer depth has reached its highest value yet at 68cm this week! Strong winds delayed some of our initial drone flying, but there have been lots of ground observations made. The metal probe we’re using for the active layer depth measurements is also a pretty good walking pole! And when dragged along the ground sounds a bit like that noise from that horror movie “The Shining’.

Every day

Awe-inspiring sunsets – Qikiqtaruk is beautiful at all times of the day, but the evening light makes it all extra special! There are also many ittle moments of beauty in the field – be it a particularly fluffy patch of cottongrass, backlight lupines, a family of ptarmigans walking by, or just the sheer grandeur of the landscape, it’s been great to stop during data collection for a second to take it all in.

So at nearly one month in there are many milestones to go. What will we see or experience next? Only time will tell…

By Gergana, Isla and Team Drone