Snowy Iqaluit

Zoe Panchen

We are in Iqaluit! It is a little colder than Ottawa and there is still a lot of snow but there is bare tundra in places. Like Ottawa and the northeastern US and even Europe, spring is much later coming this year than last year in Iqaluit.

View from our kitchen window

We haven't figured out Iqaluit's pattern yet. On our first day we walked down the centre of the potholed road while the car passed us along the smooth sides of the road. It is hard to get directions to places as no one uses street names but it is such a small place that it is easy to wonder around to find them. We are not sure if there is really a downtown as buildings of importance are dotted about in different parts of town.

Snowy Iqaluit

We went in search of the plants we want to monitor and found 20 species we are interested in just across the road from our apartment! Even though the temperatures are hovering around zero and there are flurries of snow there is already signs of life with a few tiny green leaves peeping through and flower buds expanding. We identified many of the plants from the seed heads and leaves from last years growth.

Tofieldia pussila (Bog Asphodel)

Saxifraga tricuspidata (Prickly Saxifrage)

Food Glorious Food

Zoe Panchen

Lake Hazen in Quttinirpaaq National Park at the northern tip of Ellesmere Island is as about as remote as it gets. Everything I need for the six weeks I will be there will have to be flown in with me and that includes all my food.

So how do you plan for food for six weeks? Roger Bull who works at the Canadian Museum of Nature and has been in charge of organising food for several of the Museum's botanical field trips to the Arctic, reminded me "you don't want to run out of food". He suggested putting together a meal plan for a week and then multiplying it by the number of week of the trip. So I put together a spreadsheet of food items for breakfast, lunch and supper for each day of the week and then multiplied that by seven weeks! And out came a rather big shopping list. I added an extra week of food just in case the flight out is delayed by bad weather or some food goes off or any other unforeseen eventuality.

I enlisted the help of my boyfriend Chris and his expedition ruck sack, we went shopping and staggered home with a huge amount of food. Most of what I bought was dried food - soups, rice, pasta, couscous, potato flakes and rice or noodle meals for supper, crackers, nuts, granola bars for lunch and hot oatmeal and cereal for breakfast.


Loading up the shopping trolley
with dehydrated food for seven weeks

I have also been busy dehydrating vegetables and fruits. The dehydrator has been humming most nights for the past two weeks. I started with simple, easy things like frozen peas and corn. Then I got hooked and became more adventurous. I've chopped and dried apples, bananas, mushrooms, onions and celery. I've even dried pasta sauce into leather strips and complete meals with veggies and tofu in sauces. Quite a Smörgåsbord of delectable delights!

Dehydrating pasta sauce leather

Dried apples, bananas, peas, corn, broccoli,
cauliflower, tuna and more........

 

Looking Intimidating to the Mosquitos, I Hope

Sofia Jain

I have spent the past 22 days learning more than I thought was possible, about everything from the shapes of hairs on tiny arctic plants to the geography of Nunavut. I've been learning to distinguish a list of 70 plants we should find in Iqaluit and have put together a list of GPS coordinates of were we hope to find them. With only four more days until we're off to Iqaluit, I've almost completed gathering a long list of equipment and food. Now I'm looking at it wondering how it's all going to fit in a suit case! Having been warned about the bugs up North, one of the first things I decided to invest in was a bug jacket and hat. My sister and I tested it out at my cottage. It worked surprisingly well! I got no bites while I had it on! I'm feeling a little less worried about getting eaten alive up North...I think that was 30$ well spent.

Going off the map

Zoe Panchen

In just over a week's time I along with my research assistant, Sofia, are heading to the Canadian Arctic to monitor Arctic plant phenology! It is a loooong journey. First we will fly 3hrs north from Ottawa to Iqaluit on Baffin Island, where we will be spending 2wks setting up phenology monitoring around Iqaluit. Sofia will continue the monitoring at Iqaluit while I will fly 3.5 hrs further north to Resolute on Cornwallis Island and then another 4hrs even further north on a Twin Otter prop plane to Lake Hazen in Quttinirpaaq National Park on Ellesmere Island. That is pretty much as far north as one can go in Canada or anywhere in the Arctic. I have now discovered that Canada is longer north to south than it is wide east to west!

While in the Arctic, myself and my research assistants will be recording when Arctic plant species are flowering, how long they flower for and how long it takes to reach fruit maturity. We will be taking lots of photos capturing the species' flowering and fruiting developmental progression. The data we gather will be used as a baseline for my research on phenological responses of Arctic plants to climate change.
Phenology is the study of the timing of natures seasonal biological events such as the timing of leafing out and flowering, arrival of migrant birds and emergence of insects.