Our first full day at camp we put on skis and skied out to the lowland sites to check the snow conditions at the five sites. We recorded any plots that were snow free and checked the weather stations to see if they had run all winter. The snow was melting fast on this lovely sunny day and was all gone from the lowland within a couple of weeks.
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Skiing across the tundra to the field sites
at Alexandra Fiord on 8th June 2019.
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| The snow was melting fast on the tundra. In some of the open top chamber plots the snow was already gone especially at the willow site. |
Our first field work task was to add and
remove snow from plots at Beach Ridge. Beach Ridge is a raised beach formed by
the rebound of the land after glaciation. The natural snow drift area formed in
the lea of the ridge forms a perfect site for studying phenology and plant
community differences among different snow treatments. With a warming climate
are increased snow depths in some areas of the Arctic and hence we can study
some other effects of climate change. We left one plot with the natural snow
amount but dug snow out of the next plot and added to the third plot over and repeated
for three plot triplets. A good work out on another beautiful sunny day.
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Shovelling snow from a snow removal plot to a
snow addition plot at Beach Ridge site.
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| Snow removal, snow addition and control plots at Beach Ridge site. |
