Hey IGEA fam!! A couple days ago we arrived at Toolik around 3:30 after a nice and long 9 hour drive from Sophie’s Station! Right after Atigen Pass we took a quick stop to headstand in the freezing rain and mud. We had a quick orientation upon arrival and then headed off to the mess hall so everyone could grab some snacks and food, Nate was especially excited for this event! Post indulging we checked out our new lab (Lab #1). We unpacked and organized our field gear for the big first day whilst working on some data transferring preparation. We additionally went over our science plan one last time. We then headed off to our bunks to get aquatinted with our sleeping arrangements for the next 10 days. After dinner we reorganized gear in the lab and began preparing for our first field morning. Our night came to a close watching the sunset over the tundra and once again practicing more headstands.

Last day of quarantine today! It has been a long but productive 8 days and we’re definitely getting a little stir crazy at the hotel but we’ve learned a lot and have really grown as a team.

Over the last couple of days we did more team bonding and total station practice. We set up an “elliptical pool” through the use of a concave in Sophie’s Station lawn and marked points using various items like water bottles, masks, backpacks, and notebooks. We were able to test out shooting points using the rod and total station, and also practiced taking gps points using the extrex. The next day we used the extrex to find the points we had taken the previous day which was great practice for what we’re going to have to do in the field when it comes to finding groups 1 and 2 points. 

Emma, our science lead, came up with a concrete list of the twelve streams we are going to be visiting based on the other groups’ input and the data we’ve been analyzing as a team. We’ve come across some challenges while analyzing the data such as missing points, results that haven’t made sense, and incorrect measurements but we’ve worked through it and are looking forward to looking further into it next semester. We’ve also done additional team bonding like outdoor group yoga one evening. 

Today we finalized our plans for the field and did our final team bonding activity of the week which was breaking up into teams and leading your blindfolded partner through a maze only through the use of your voice. It was a very fun activity and tested how well we can work together. We also got the truck today and had an orientation where we were taught how to drive the truck, where and what all the gear is, and as a group we changed one of the tires. It was very useful information and we’re all really looking forward to driving up the Dalton Highway. For the rest of the day we’re completing any leftover tasks, doing additional data analysis, and packing up our stuff. We’re leaving tomorrow at 7am and I’m very very excited. Can’t wait to see what the next ten days in the field will be like!

Quarantine is over halfway done for group 3 and it’s been very productive!

Yesterday we did some more team bonding and total station practice, this time setting up the total station and taking various points throughout the lawn of Sophie’s Station. After that we decided to take the afternoon off and go on a walk to the University of Fairbanks which was about 2 miles away. We walked around outside campus, went to a botanical garden, and even saw Denali park mountains in the distance which was very cool! After our long walk we did some more team bonding by ordering Thai food and Elizabeth locked herself out of her hotel room (again) hahah. 

Today we took our scheduled at-home covid tests and then started the day with a couple hours of data analysis. Emma and I (Chris) are working on the isotope data and Elizabeth and Nate are making lots of progress on the total station plotting. Emma finalized a list of what streams we plan on visiting based on the other groups input and we all went over the measurement plan in detail. After that the group met outside to do team bonding. Today we painted our nails as a and sat in a circle while we talked about grad school, research, and river rafting. After our nails dried Ellie led a leadership and feedback activity which were designed to help us get a better understanding of one another when working together. She then taught us how to rescue someone from a river using a throw bag and we practiced that. Later on Elizabeth made us brownies (yummy yummy) and we worked on our own stuff the rest of the day.

Overall we’re all getting very excited for the field and things are starting to come together!

Overall days two and three of quarantine have been very productive. Elizabeth, our gear lead, has been preparing us for the field by showing us how to use the total station and etrex. We’ve been practicing setting up and taking down the total station and finding various gps points using the etrex device. As a whole we’ve been doing a lot of team building activities led by our camp manager Nate. We’ve gotten to know each other fairly well over the last few days and I know over the next few weeks we’ll grow even closer. 

One of our main priorities has been data analysis. In order to make conclusions on if our science plan should be revised or not we’ve been looking at the previous data collected. Emma and I (Chris) have been looking at the isotope data and analyzing our results with some guidance from Ellie. Elizabeth and Nate have been working on the total station data. Overall we’re making progress on it despite coming across some difficulties along the way. We also met with members from groups 1 and 2 today to discuss which streams to prioritize based on their experiences and challenges they faced. Emma is working on a solidified list based on their input. 

In our free time we’ve been going on nature walks and exploring the surrounding areas since the weather has been so nice here! Nate has been going on runs and I (Chris) recently explored the Chena Riverwalk. As a whole we’ve been productive and have been keeping busy. Looking forward to the rest of quarantine!

Group 3 is officially in Fairbanks! 

After a very long day of travel Nate, Emma, Elizabeth, Ellie and I (Chris) successfully landed at Fairbanks International Airport yesterday at around 9pm. Nate, Emma, Elizabeth, and I had a short flight from Connecticut to Minneappolis, had a long layover and then met up with Ellie for our 6 hour flight to Fairbanks. A shuttle took us from the airport to Sophie’s Station which is where we will be quarantining for the next eight days. We did some quick grocery shopping as a group and then officially began our quarantine at midnight. 

Overall, we had a busy first day of quarantine. We started the morning with a meeting outside in the rain to get used to the weather and try out gear. We went over the science plan and safety protocols in depth, reviewed emergency communications and put them in our field notebooks, discussed the social media plan, and received our gear that we had stored in Fairbanks. We then went over the Code of Conduct, organized the daily plan for the remainder of quarantine and started data analysis for the total stations and isotope data that groups 1 and 2 collected at the beginning of the summer. We hope to use this data to get a better understanding of possible trends and patterns, and make changes to our science plan depending on our findings. We also met with Oskar, Sam, and Jackson who all gave good insight on data analysis and other helpful information. After this we called it a night and decided to pick things back up tomorrow morning. The weather cleared up so some of us decided to go on a socially distanced walk outside to get some fresh air and keep from going stir crazy in our hotel rooms. (side note: Elizabeth has already locked herself out of her hotel room twice and we haven’t been here for 24 hours yet…)

So far the last two days have been long but very productive. It has been great getting to bond as a group and we’ve been working together to make sure we have a solid plan while in the field. We still have a lot more to do, especially for data analysis, but I’m fully confident that we’ll be able to get it done and successfully conduct our science plan while in Toolik. 

On day 5, we finished Elliptical 3 in three hours. Morgan even got to use the pack raft to take points within the stream. We also helped Ted and Ellie install their sensors into the Sag. 

Day 6 was a very long day for us, we hiked over 11 kilometers! We had plans to measure and sample 3 thaw pits but only finished 2. Then we went home and took the night off to go to the bonfire at Toolik and we chatted with some pretty cool people. 

Overall, we have 8 streams completed and we met our goal for this trip so yesterday we mainly focused on helping Ted and Ellie on their project. We hit 5 of their sites to sample and install sensors. Throughout the day Ellie also had fun riddles for us and we made mystery sandwiches for each other for lunch. Then we came back to wrap things up and clean the lab and truck for group 2. We also looked at our gps coordinates from the pools we measured and our points mapped out where we measured pretty accurately. 

We had a very bumpy ride back to Fairbanks today and Jackson saw a bear right when we left. We had 7 hours to kill before our flight so we took an Uber to go to the Fairbanks Ice Museum but Jackson lost his wallet before we even got to buy our tickets. After calling a bunch of people, we took an Uber to the Polar Field Station to hunt down the van that his wallet was in. Thankfully we found it and now we’re looking for places that are open late enough to eat. 

On day 2 we began by visiting Ted and Ellie’s sites on the Sag, the river was flowing very fast compared to the day before and it was quite warm that day (almost 50 degrees) so ice on the river seemed to be breaking up. Huge chunks of ice were floating down while Ted and Ellie were trying to install their sensors in the water so we kept an eye out for ice to make sure Ted and Ellie didn’t taken out by ice flowing downstream. Ted also took us on a very steep, long hike to the Sag for sampling. The snow here was perfect for a snowball fight though. 

Then, we went to our first elliptical stream, only to find it half frozen and snowed over. This made some of our active layer and permafrost measurements in the pools difficult because of the ice. However, we got the chance to bust out the pack raft for the first time since this stream was a bit deep in some areas. 

On day 3, we finished Thaw Pit 14 in 2 hours! We had high hopes going to Eliptical Pool 7 but heavy rain set in before we could start data collection. We still decided to flag out and mark the cross sections we wanted to measure so we could jump straight into measurements when we come back in day 4. Once we got back from the field, we had a productive call with group 2 who are currently in quarantine in Fairbanks to fill them in about our experience so far and update them on the changes we have made. During data entry, Jackson opened the total station data from Thaw Pit 14 and found some discrepancies in the data entered for the total station height. After a few hours of frustration we decided that going forward we will take more notes on what we enter into the total station during set up as well as have one person watch while another person sets up the total station to make sure they don’t mistype in coordinates or heights. 

On day 4, we started the morning off by revisiting Elliptical 7 and found that the pools had less ice on them and were filled with more water than from the day before due to rain and ice melting. We finished that pool in an hour and a half since everything was already marked up and ready to go from day 3. We also finished Elliptical 10 that day and the water here was moving very fast with strong currents so it was fun watching Ellie steer the pack raft around the stream. We got home a bit late and still had a lot of data to digitize (almost two hours of digitizing). Going forward, we plan on making it back earlier to avoid late nights of data entry. 

On our sixth day in quarantine, we received our truck and had our truck orientation to prepare us for a safe trip up the Dalton Highway. During our last quarantine meeting, we had a total station race to see who could set up the total station the fastest. Unsurprisingly, our gear lead Jackson won taking only 8 minutes to set up and shoot the back sight. Meanwhile, Thanh and Morgan tied for last place at 18 minutes because they typed some things wrong and had to reenter them. That day, Ellie also surprised the group with ice cream after the total station race!

On Sunday, May 29th, we began our eight hour drive to Toolik Field Station. The drive was very bumpy the entire ride and very foggy with terrible visibility through Atigun Pass. Towards the end of the journey, we saw a herd of caribou on the side of the road. 

From our first day in the field, we realized the importance of vigilance since there were so many more animal sightings then we expected. During our drive to Ellie and Ted’s sampling sites in the Sagavanirktok River, we had four separate sightings of musk oxen and one of the groups had a few babies running around! At Ellie and Ted’s second site near Ice Cut, a truck stopped by to warn us that there were two blond grizzly bears just a few hundred meters away from where we were working! On our small hike to another sampling location we ran into a musk ox less than a hundred meters ahead of us blocking our path to the site. 

After hitting Ellie and Ted’s sites, we still had plenty of time so we headed over to our first stream, a thaw pit! Here, we saw two caribou in the distance while surveying. We noticed that the permafrost layer was pretty shallow today, barely a few inches below the active layer since it hasn’t warmed up from the colder months yet. Surveying and sampling this site took us over three hours since it was our first attempt at the science plan in the arctic tundra. We made some changes to the procedure so hopefully tomorrow is a bit smoother and less time consuming. Even so, we ended the day earlier than expected at 6:40 PM and hit all our goals for the day!

Group 1 is officially safe and sound in Fairbanks! 

After a three hour plane ride from Boston to Minneapolis, Jackson and I (Thanh) met up with Ellie and Ted in Minneapolis for a short layover. Then we had another six hours of travel before landing in Fairbanks where we had a lovely shuttle driver who introduced the city as a place with lots to see but nothing to do. He also shared many interesting facts about Alaska during the car ride, including that Alaska has over 140 volcanoes, making it the state with the most volcanoes. Once we arrived at our hotel we were able to reunite with our science lead Morgan and begin our eight day quarantine.

We spent the last four days in quarantine sharpening up our science plan and team building. The first day consisted of reviewing the code of conduct, notebook plan and science goals. On the second day, we went through the science plan and learned how to set up a total station. We also practiced taking total station measurements, working with the GPS, and how to write these points down in the field notebooks. Ellie also taught us how to use a throw bag to save someone if they fell into the water. On the third day we continued to practice setting up the total station and took mock total station points for both tundra and water measurements. In addition, Ellie showed us how to use the pack raft.

Today, we started off by doing an activity to identify our leadership styles and how we like to receive feedback so we can all communicate with each other properly. We also attempted to run through a full mock up of stream data collection but ran into a few logistical issues for the order of operations. We still need to come up with a plan to minimize our walking distance in the tundra since our science plan requires us to walk out 150 meters on each side of the stream for every cross section of points. 

These few days have been very helpful in catching small miscommunication and tweaking parts of the science plan or data plan to accommodate for that. It was also great hands on practice for using gear. By the end of quarantine we hope be able to confidently conduct our plan in Toolik with optimal efficiency and accuracy.

Hello Everyone, guest blog post from Emma today! On the 5th of May, Morgan and I hopped on a plane in Bradley airport (CT.) to fly to Denver, CO. Our 6 hour delay set us back, but once we got there, we hit the ground running. We hopped on a bus in Denver to take us to Boulder where we then grabbed food, hopped in an Uber, reached the A-lodge (the place where we stayed), found our campsite, and set up camp as the sun set. Ten days from then Morgan and I both were Wilderness First Responder Certified! The training included 8 hours a day of class both in and outside learning key techniques to prevent, identify, assess, and treat certain trauma injuries, medical illnesses, and common ailments under wilderness conditions. The key difference between this class and most first aid classes is the ability to not only intervene while waiting for emergency medical teams to arrive, but it prepares outdoor leaders to anticipate, prevent, manage, and treat injuries and illnesses in the backcountry where “definitive care is delayed, resources are limited, communication is difficult, and conditions may be austere.” During this course we learned how to do just that with amazing and knowledgeable instructors and fellow classmates. After we officially passed both our written and practical exams, Morgan and I headed to the airport where she hopped on a plane to Anchorage, Alaska and I returned back to Bradley Airport in Connecticut.