The 2018 Field season is upon us. Here are a few pics from the field.

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The 2018 Field season is upon us. Here are a few pics from the field.
Not only has our team been using drones for collecting super high resolution data for mapping and measuring snow water equivalent... we also dabble in neat little videos. This video by @lets-tundra-snow was a test using the high res #pix4D point cloud data to show basin wide snowmelt from above. You can check out some of the awesome data results and analysis at the #arcticnet conference
Back in the North
After what seemed like a non-existent summer break we are back at it again. Gabriel and myself arrived in Inuvik today and were greeted by Evan, one of our graduate students, who spent his entire summer in the town of Inuvik living among a wide mix of great researchers hosted by the Aurora College’s Aurora Research Institute (ARI for short). We have only been in town for a few hours but are already settled in and back in the old routine. The weather in town is gorgeous with blue skies and a high of 15C.
View of the western Mackenzie Delta region heading to Old Crow on the new Air North ATR
Laurier truck in front of the ARI rowhouses
Evan seems to have had an awesome summer in the land of the endless sun. After seeing some of his photos and hearing a few stories I think we are all a bit envious of his decision. He has spend the majority of his time working on his research project, but has also been involved in a few side research projects- Particularly noteworthy was the NASA ABoVE AirSWOT where Evan collected lake level validation points, measured frost table depths, and installed GPS buoys at multiple sites within the flight domain (see map). His hard work will serve as one of the major field validation datasets for this project! Good work Evan!
Evan Wilcox surveying lake surface elevations for the NASA AirSWOT program. Photo Credit: E. Wilcox
Evan Wilcox surveying lake surface elevations for the NASA AirSWOT program. Photo Credit: E. Wilcox
Map of the lakes surveys for AirSWOT. A total of 26 lakes were surveyed using a Leica GNSS and helicopter. Frost table depths were also recorded at each lake. Map Credit: E. Wilcox
We have a busy few weeks ahead of us. Over the next few days my primary goals are focused around getting supplies and coordinating logistics, but we will have time for a bit of fun.. and by fun I mean assist Gabriel in the field at our local Havikpak meteorological site maintaining and calibrating the instruments.
We will be joined later in the week by two new Trail Valley Creek members, Barun Majumder and Ashley Rudy (individual research profiles to follow soon). Barun and Ashley will be assisting our field work and checking out the Trail Valley area. Always a blast to have new members visit and assist in the field! Lets hope the weather stays nice- and the bugs stay home.
Check out our twitter page for regular updates!
B
Here we go again!
I guess I never mentioned on here that we left in July, but here we are back at Trail Valley again! Although we had a few weeks back in Ontario, and then a bit over a week in Oregon for the Ecological Society of America (ESA) conference, it feels a bit like we never left Trail Valley Creek. Things in camp hardly changed while we were gone – aside from one stop-in while we were gone during July, nobody has been living here since Cory and I left. We had (and still have) a bit to do to get things up and running again. It took me most of the day to get the main heater in the weather haven running (today was cool enough that it was needed). Fuel wasn’t getting to it the way it should, but with a bit of disassembly and some tinkering, I got it heating again! We also can only get the smaller and more efficient generator (which powers the incinerating toilet) to start occasionally. This is why we have back-ups of everything in camp though! There was a bit of wind damage while we were gone too – the iconic caribou skull on the TVC population sign blew off, and the NWT flag got shredded. Both repairable and/or replaceable, but just not high on our priority list.
The tundra was super green when we got here, with all the flowers having passed their prime (and no lack of rain, as indicated by the HUGE puddles and high water levels everywhere). As beautiful as the flowers were, it is pretty darn awesome to have the abundant blueberries that ripen up at this time of year! Even since arriving, we’ve seen some of the willow shrubs start to change colour – autumn comes fast on the tundra! The sun is setting a bit at night, which is a welcome change from before we left. It’s still not getting truly dark out, but that’ll happen soon enough, and with that means the return of northern lights!
We had an awesome encounter with our little friend from the spring, Monty the fox on our first night back in camp. Just as we were going to bed he was hanging around near our tent, and I’m pretty sure the little guy started playing a game with us. Any time I would talk to him, he would start running full-tilt and bouncing around all over the place (like a really excited puppy), sometimes coming really close before turning away fast. He kept on doing this for quite awhile, and I got a video of it that I’ll try to post when not on camp-quality internet. It was pretty hilarious to watch.
On the science front, things haven’t been super exciting. The snow fence seedlings that we were super excited about look to perhaps be the wrong species, now that they have matured a bit and had some true leaves emerge – quite a bummer. It’s insane how many of them still have only cotyledons though – we did not expect them to look as much as new germinants as they do! We’re also trying to re-work a shrub seedling/sapling dendrochronology (tree-ring) project of Cory’s, as we realized that there were some flaws in the original sampling plans. Not totally a surprise that this happened – I don’t think I’ve ever had a project actually go through with the original sampling plans once getting out to the field! It’s just the way things seem to go with field ecology. Until we figure that out, we’ve been counting seedlings at the locations where Cory had deployed seed traps that we collected in the spring. That way, he can pair seed counts with seedling counts. Yesterday while doing this, we made a detour to finally walk across the Trail Valley Creek bridge that’s a part of the Inuvik-Tuktoyaktuk “highway” that’ll be opening in the fall. It’s a pretty impressive bridge, for the middle of nowhere! We also came across evidence that the highway has served as a caribou freeway – many many tracks along the entire kilometer of road that we walked!
Today we rebuilt the snow fence so it’s ready for another winter (we took it down so it wouldn’t cause shading effects over the summer months). It was cool enough to keep the bugs relatively at bay which was good, because it was very still and overcast – two thirds of the bug horror trifecta! I also found two caribou antlers while walking to and from the snow fence site. One of them was the most decomposed I’ve ever seen an antler up here get – when I pulled it out of the moss, it fractured across the broadest part! That one didn’t make the trip back to camp, but I’ve at least got one more “tundra trophy” in my collection.
I think that’s all the news for now. Pretty quiet around here with just Cory and I, but not as weird when it started off with a bunch of people and then dwindled down to two. This time, we get to look forward to more people joining us, starting in just over a week!
Check out our #Ecology colleagues working at Trail Valley Creek research station. Will see you two in a few days!
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Camp life!
A short glimpse of camp life
The Weird Ways of Camp Life
One of the things that you learn doing fieldwork is that you pick up some weird habits. You know, things that we accept as normal that might seem outrageous to the rest of the world. For some insight into the oddities of living in a remote camp in the arctic, I have compiled a list of some of these things. Enjoy, and don’t judge too hard – I swear we can actually be “normal” people when immersed in the real world!
Tundra Time is its own time zone.
While in the real world people have commitments to jobs, responsibilities to others, social events, and in most places in the world have daylight to give cues to what you should be doing with your life, we lack most of these time triggers up here. Granted, we have jobs to do, but who really cares what time of day they happen as long as they get done? Cory and I have basically given up on watches out here. Firstly because they both were very sluggish when it was cold, so they weren’t doing much good anyway. But it also works out great whether you’ve got a tonne of work to do in a day, or just a few things; when we’re putting in long days, as long as the sun is out and there are lots of snacks in your bag, it’s really easy to put in a 10 hour workday without realizing it (knowing the time just makes it worse). When there isn’t much to do, it’s pretty obvious – there’s no need to rush. And we basically only had a few days where there was actual darkness since we’ve been here, so the sun certainly isn’t helping keep any sort of normal circadian rhythm. In a typical day, we wake up around a very bright 10 am (maybe later lately since we’re just working from camp), have some breakfast, work until mid to late afternoon, have lunch around 5 pm, work more, have dinner around 10 pm (though often later depending on how frozen dinner ingredients still are), and go bed by around 1:30 am (still very much light out).
Bathing is optional, and rare. Especially in the winter.
While in the summer it’s possible to grab a bucket of water and give yourself a sponge bath, or brave the icy cold waters for a dunk in the creek to freshen up, things get a bit tougher during the winter. It’s cold. Being wet is cold. Clean is just not worth it. In the month that we’ve been here, there was a day not too long ago that I decided that I could survive having wet hair and not freeze too much, so I washed my hair in a bucket. The biodegradable body soaps that we have don’t really cut the grease anyway, so I basically still looked like a dirtbag (but smelled faintly of peppermint). Did some laundry too though, so at least if I didn’t look clean, I had clean underwear. Despite the fact that I am one of the most-bathed people in camp at a rate of one hair wash per month, things are surprisingly not smelly. Either we haven’t been working hard enough, or we’ve all just slowly acclimatized to the smell, it isn’t too bad. We do occasionally take advantage of baby wipes and powder to “freshen up”, so that probably helps too.
In the summer, camp food is limited to non-perishables. In the winter, we eat like kings!
Who would have thought that the dinner menu would involve steak, chicken parmesan, roast beef with Yorkshire pudding, and frequent burrito nights? Not me, given that in the summer most dinner is based around various types of canned things (some less appetizing than others) and whatever onions/carrots/garlic that haven’t gone too moldy. Or pasta. Between the cold temperatures allowing us to bring in meat and keep it from spoiling, and the epic stove/oven that we now have (goodbye days of Coleman stoves!), we’re cooking up a storm here! I’m exploring my inner chef and making some pretty darn tasty meals with all that we’ve got here, and some decent baked goodies too (my peach crumble was amazing, if I do say so myself). We’ve had some weird things … like pork neck bone. Didn’t know that was a thing that people ate, but it came in our bulk bundle of meats so I made something of it. Pretty darn tasty in the end – just a bit of WTF?! upon finding it. Now that things are warming up quite rapidly, we’re on a high protein diet trying to get through all of the meat before things spoil. It’s a pretty tough life having to go through two packs of bacon a day between five people … :P
Your bowel movements become scheduled to the times when the generator is running
We got new incinerating toilets this year, which is awesome because the former “Ecojohn” was crap (pun intended), but they’re pretty big power hogs and our solar array can’t handle the load (pun intended again). Running a generator all day just to power a toilet isn’t the most efficient, and you’d be surprised how quickly one’s bowels become triggered by the sound of a generator starting. Okay, that might’ve been TMI, but you don’t get how exciting it is to have a working incinerating toilet! Thank you Incinolet, for your fool-proof, auger-less “inshitterator” design!
The internet quality changes with the weather
Do you know what happens when you have satellite internet for which the satellite sits upon a platform that seasonally sinks into the thawing ground? Crappy internet when things warm up! Today we had to readjust the satellite for the first time this season due to its platform dropping and losing signal entirely for most of the day. But, we’re back online! This is going to be a common occurrence as the summer progresses – there are good days, and bad days, and sometimes you just have to re-angle the dish. Still worth it to be able to have internet in the middle of the tundra!
The local helicopter pilot is the camp hero
When you’re in a camp like ours, when once things melt the only option to get anything in or out is helicopter, everyone worships the bringer of the goods! We’re especially lucky that our local pilot, Chuck, is a superstar – we couldn’t ask for someone better to be the one in charge of getting us and all of our stuff in and out safely! So Chuck has gained some pretty high status among camp residents – he brings us food, power, shelter, and sometimes he brings us the only new face that we’ve seen for weeks on end! We might come across as a *little* obsessed, but rightfully so – Chuck and co. treat us pretty darn well up here at Trail Valley, and we’re super grateful for it (and really deprived of human contact). Also, the sound of a helicopter is super exciting, even if it isn’t coming for us. There is usually an exclamation of “CHUCK!!!!” (even though it could be any of the pilots) and a feeling like we aren’t all alone in the world out here.
Anyway, I’m sure that there are more things that I’ve forgotten, but that’s all I can come up with for now. If I think of more camp-isms, I will be sure to share!
Until next time, from the half-thawed tundra,
Ana and Cory
Three weeks in - here’s what’s happening at TVC!
Hi everyone!
Well, I make no promises about a consistent blog, but how about periodic updates? The first stretch here was pretty busy – the problem with doing work in the snow is that you never know when it is going to disappear, so there was a lot of rushing to get our snow work done! A few weeks later and it has still barely melted … hence, we have time for things like a big update on what we’ve been up to. Let’s start at the beginning!
We had a beautiful trip up here – an overnight in Vancouver, which was sunny and beautiful and blooming – it almost made me not want to head north to winter again! There we got to catch up with a whole bunch of Cory’s friends at an amazing potluck, and I got my all-time favourite espresso beverage, the Spanish Latte. The next day brought us to one of my favourite cities, Whitehorse. Cory has only had really brief stopovers in the city, so we spent the afternoon wandering around the awesome trails along the Yukon River, and admiring all of the sights of pretty frozen rivers and snow-topped mountains in balmy 8 degree (Celsius) weather. The next day was an early morning start to take the milk run to Inuvik. We jumped aboard the good old reliable Air North Hawker Siddley, and hopped from Inuvik -> Dawson City -> Old Crow -> Inuvik. We lost the spring weather pretty quickly en route – still in the -20 degree (Celsius) range once we landed in Inuvik!
We had a few days in Inuvik to get organized, and on April 19th we hit the trails with a couple ski-doos dragging toboggans full of our gear for a 3 hour trip into camp (midway between Inuvik and Tuktoyaktuk)! Cory started off with a bang – before we even left the boundaries of town, Cory launched his ski-doo and toboggan over a snow bank and caught at least 4 feet of air, and still managed to stick the landing. Apparently the large bump pushed him into the throttle. A very dramatic start to his snowmobiling career! Things were much less exciting for the remainder of the trip – just a lot of really beautiful sights as we travelled from the north edge of the boreal forest into the tundra!
We’ve been kept well through the worst of the cold and it’s just going to get warmer from here (we hope). Cory and I have been very grateful for our army surplus purchased sleeping bags – so toasty every night, no matter how cold it has been! The first few nights in camp we had some darkness, and with darkness in the north comes auroras! There were some pretty spectacular auroras that only lasted for a maybe a minute one night, but in that minute we saw greens, reds, and purples dancing right across the sky! Not long after that night and complete darkness became a thing of the past – no more dark for the tundra until August.
Science progressed slowly but surely, and the very slow snowmelt worked in our favour. We had three main projects that we wanted to get done before snowmelt:
1) Take a bunch snow cores from shrub patches to count seed in the snow (green alder drops its seed over the winter, so that’s the best place to find its seed)
2) Snow survey (aka measure snow depth and density) across a bunch of shrub patches and Cory’s snow fence that he set up to test aspects of the snow-shrub hypothesis that is a pretty big deal in the tundra shrub world
3) Measure the temperature at the snow-ground interface
As with most science, we had our fair share of hiccups – Cory and I came to hate the snow tube that we use to take snow cores. Sometimes the snow would get stuck in it and we would lose a bunch of time trying to get it out, or the “plug” of soil that it usually grabs would get stuck too and be impossible to get out, or we would just hit a thick layer of “wind slab” in the snow that was almost impenetrable by the corer and took ages to get through. And then there was the first snow pit that we dug to measure the temperature at the snow-ground interface – the darn thing was 160 cm deep! It takes awhile to dig that deep in snow! We aren’t talking light fluffy stuff either, it takes some serious chipping to get through some layers! This insanely dense snow is what makes igloos so much easier to build here than in more southern snow though – we pulled out some pretty awesome snow bricks.
I was really surprised at how different the snow is here from what I’ve seen at Scotty Creek (near Fort Simpson, NWT). There is so much more variability across the landscape on the tundra – some areas are hardly 15 cm deep, and other areas you get several meters! When there’s nothing but hills, low vegetation, and a whole lot of wind over the winter, you get some serious snow movement and drifting. One of the other really neat things is the ice fog – beautiful, shimmering ice fog that leaves the most amazing frosty crystals on everything it touches! I can’t get enough of the intricacy of the crystals. We also have gotten some cool variability in the shape of the snowflakes that fall. Apparently the usual thing for up here are these tiny little snow columns that fall (they look like delicate little sprinkles), but when it got milder we got perfect little traditional snowflakes. Very pretty!
There’s been a little bit of wildlife around camp – we had a fox (“Monty”) who was a bit of a regular around camp, but we spooked it off with a bear banger when it started to get into garbage. He was quite the beautiful fella, and I got some awesome pictures of him. One morning he even posed for me in front of a stunning early morning sun dog! There are a ton of ptarmigans around, ladel-ladel-ladelling through the night, and the usual ravens occasionally flying over. The past week all of the migratory birds have started flocking back in mass though – Canadian geese, snow geese, sandhill cranes, and loons have all started making overhead appearances! I don’t know where they’re all going to go right now considering everything around us is still snow/ice covered, but it’s a welcome sign of “spring” anyway. There was a grizzly bear sighting a few kilometers away from camp, and some big grizzly tracks through the snow in Trail Valley Creek itself, but no major threats to camp.
We went out on a big ice fishing expedition awhile ago to the Husky Lakes – this is the place where I had hiked to last summer (a 3.5 hour hike) and caught lake trout and arctic grayling. The snowmobile trip was soooo much easier of course, but our fishing was not so successful – we only caught tiny little sea monsters (sculpin). It was still a very lovely relaxing day after Cory and I had been putting in some very long days of fieldwork for 10 days non-stop.
Life around camp has been great. There have been some great improvements to camp this year, like incinerating toilets that actually work effectively (thanks Incinolet!) and a stellar little propane stove/oven that has been well used. One of the perks of winter work is actually having meat in camp, so we’ve had meals featuring roast beef, chicken parmesan, steaks, and soooo much bacon for breakfast! We’ve done a fair bit of baking too – cookies, cakes, muffins, biscuits, peach crumble, quiche, and pizza! It’s a pretty awesome place to be all-around.
I think that covers all of the highlights of our fieldwork adventures so far. Now that we have down time while we’re waiting for the snow to melt, Cory and I are going to work on writing some papers that need our attention – much less exciting than playing in the snow, but it’s gotta happen!
Until next time!
-Ana and Cory
A post from some of #TVCs own Cory and Ana
Researcher Profile: Dilshan Kariyawasam
Hi there, my name is Dilshan Kariyawasam and I’ve just joined the TVC team. I’m entering my fifth year at Wilfrid Laurier University. At this point, I almost have my BSc Geography (I just completed the ‘Environmental Science Option’ and I’m aiming to complete the ‘Geomatics Option’ as well this year). It’s nice to have the extra titles on my degree, but I figured I should be exposed to more science (hence the Environmental Science Option) and learn at least the basics in handling / processing / analyzing data (hence the Geomatics Option).
During my final year of highschool I took a class called ‘Earth and Space Science’ and thoroughly enjoyed what I learned. It was the first time material clicked so well with me! It was fun to take my knowledge outside of class and analyze the world around me. After that, I decided to follow a field that allowed me to continue learning science and the world around me. As I progressed year by year at university, my classes continued to be interesting. Admittedly, I preferred learning about rocks (geology) more than the atmosphere and water (hydrology). However, since my early years of highschool a friend and myself prioritized exploring the world (including the Arctic!). At first I knew I had to start smaller than the world, so I started with learning about Canada. In the middle of high school my friend managed to make her way to Yellowknife (by driving from Ontario!). She bought me a glass inukshuk standing on granite with a metal ‘Yellowknife, N.W.T.’ label. I’ve placed it on my table for years now (I guess this was the beginning of me thinking about the Arctic from time to time).
During my third year of university I took Phil’s hydrology class which was also taught by Branden. After a few conversations with Branden, Phil, and Tyler I think I managed to get a foot in the door. Snow hydrology is an important part of this beautiful country and now I’ve found an opportunity to pursue it. Combined with my apparently ‘unusual’ love for winter / snow, and my curiosity for the Arctic, I’ve found myself here now. I’m here to learn about the Arctic and hopefully contribute to Arctic research.
Currently, I’m looking to use aerial imagery to construct a series of maps for some of the lakes surrounding Trail Valley Creek. The goal is to extend a currently existing record of imagery and hopefully demonstrate a prominent direction of change. This imagery could be used to help further explain my colleague’s findings and perhaps provide a better understanding of hydrological activity at Trail Valley Creek.
Researcher Profile: Anton Jitnikovitch
May 6, 2017
Researcher Profile: Anton Jitnikovitch, M.Sc Candidate
Hello TVC blog readers,
I am an MSc candidate finishing up my first year at Wilfrid Laurier University. As with most members under the supervision of Dr. Philip Marsh, my study focus is related to snow hydrology. My research interests are in new snow measurement techniques, which goes hand-in-hand with my thesis topic where I am working with different types of cosmic ray sensors in order to accurately measure snow water equivalent. This research has considerable potential to assist snow water equivalent measurements because current measurement methods are almost exclusively set in either point scale or very large scale approaches, while the cosmic ray sensors are able to measure snow at an intermediate scale. Other advantages these sensors have in comparison to conventional methods is that they are easy to install & transport, they are terrain independent, and have an extremely low environmental impact. These sensors are able to measure cosmic rays which have a galactic or solar origin. As these cosmic rays enter the earth’s upper atmosphere, they interact with nuclei and cause a cascade of secondary cosmic rays in the form of high-energy (fast) neutrons. It is these fast neutrons that the cosmic ray sensors are able to record. Before the data from these sensors can be used, it must be calibrated for air pressure, atmospheric water vapour, and the incoming temporal cosmic ray flux that occurs naturally throughout the day. Afterwards, this data must be scaled to adjust for the latitude, longitude, and elevation. Following this, the data must account for statistical noise that the cosmic ray sensors inherently detect. As one may expect, it gets considerably more complex. Overall, it is my thesis topic to prove that these sensors do (or do not!) work. While results are still preliminary, a relationship appears to exist.
On a more personal note, I spent my formative years in Siberia – the coldest place in the northern hemisphere where people actively reside – and love cold environments, especially in remote or semi-remote regions. This is my third visit to Trail Valley Creek; previous visits were in the summer, winter, and now spring. At the end of this trip I will have, in total, spent almost 50 days in the Trail Valley Creek camp and about 10 days in the town of Inuvik. Over the next year, I will be making several more trips to Trail Valley to continue conducting snow surveys in order to validate the cosmic ray sensor data I am working with. Make sure to stay tuned for my next blog update.
- A. Jitnikovitch
Some recent photos from our Trail Valley Creek researchers
April 26 update
Well, its been almost a week since our last big update, and lots of things have happened!
Firstly, a new group of people came into camp, the rest of the Marsh team, including Phil (tall version), Gabriel, Anton, and Matt. Gabriel is our meteorological station technician, working hard to make sure our eddy covariance, methane sensor, and other meteorological instruments are working properly before the summer season. During the course of the harsh Arctic winter, many instruments are prone to breaking, as we are pushing the limits of the conditions of which they are designed to work in. The MET stations often die during winter as well, since there is a month of full darkness and the stations are run completely on solar power. This year we are coordinating with NASA's ABoVE campaign, which will compare airborne measurements of eddy covariance and methane with ground based measurements. Aaron's radar measurements have been going smoothly. He has managed to scan multiple pits with full snow, slab snow removed, and all snow removed. This involved a lot of digging, especially on Vicky's part!
In the Marsh team, we have begun to do our historical end of winter snow surveys. These surveys have been completed every year since the mid-nineties, and are crucial to building a long term dataset. This involves taking snow depth measurements using an auto-recording snow depth instrument called a MagnaProbe, and density measurements using a snow tube and weight scale. Magnaprobes measure snowdepth using a free moving disk which sits on the snow surface as you push the rod into the pole. Then with the press of a button, the MagnaProbe measures the snow depth, and records the position using GPS! This is much more efficient than the old way of writing down the depth, and the coordinates, then entering it into the computer. A single person can easily take 1000 snow depth measurements in one day. Matt, Anton, and Phil have been tackling these tasks since they arrived in camp via skidoo on April 22nd.
I (Evan), have also been beginning my snow surveys in the two lake basins which are of major interest to me. From all my work, I should be able to calculate an hourly water budget for the entire summer period. The end of winter snow survey is important to the water budget, as it is the largest input of water for the year. Knowing the total water stored in the snow before it begins to melt, and measuring discharge and water level in the lake, allows you to see how quickly the snow turns into water and enters the lake, and is eventually discharged. As of now, the weirs which I built last fall are fully buried in ice, something which was not expected. As a consequence, we will have to drill a channel into the ice, measure its dimensions and then use that as a makeshift weir. This will be interesting to say the least, but this is the reality of working in such an environment, you must plan to be flexible. I have made a drone flight over the two basins, which are adjacent to one another, in order to measure snow depth using the drone. I had laid out 10 orange X's on the ground, and measured them using our new Leica GNSS system, which is accurate to within 1cm in XYZ, to be used in the post processing of the drone images in order to tie the images in to the geodetic datum properly. These GCP's are important in order to make the drone imagery as accurate as possible at measuring the snow surface. This drone flight will then be subtracted from the bare ground surface model, in order to calculate snow depth.
Branden has also been flying the drone and RTK surveying his ground control points for his study basin Siksik Creek. This is a repeat of the work he did last year (see previous year blog posts for more detail). Although this data will not be used immediately for his grad research project, it is still good practice to continue the data collection for comparison between years. Over the next few weeks Branden will prepare his weir in the channel for the spring freshet, and hopefully this year it doesn’t get washed down the stream. Other than that the next few weeks will see a regular routine of repeated snow surveys, UAV flights, and waiting for the snow to melt.
Today we saw the arrival of our Supervisor and boss, Philip Marsh, who was granted permission to drive the Inuvik-Tuk Highway and visit camp for a few days. We are sitting at 11 total in camp which exceeds our previous record of 6 for this time of the year. This number is also our “comfortable maximum” while still allowing for everyone to have ample elbow room between their neighbour.
Check out our @marsh_lab_TVC twitter for more photos of our progress.
Till next time.
-Evan and Branden
Hey all, here is the slide show from our recent visit to some grade 9-10s from the Inuvik high school. Unfortunately there is no commentary at the moment, bu...
Summary overview of our awesome and fun visit to the Inuvik Jr High school students this past week! Here is the video of our slides presentation..Our apologies as it is mostly pictures and videos and the voice section didn't make it in.
April 18 Update
Camp update- following Evans previous post
Chuck and the great pilots at Gwich’n Helicopters slung out all of our equipment on Monday the 10th. It took 6 sling loads over 2 days to get all of our camp supplies, research equipment, food, and fuel into camp. Since receiving the camp supplies and equipment Evan and I have been very busy working on setting up the camp the way we would like it for the rest of the season. There are so many improvements the camp is almost unrecognizable compared to this time last year. Here are some things we have done over the past week:
- Dug out and set up 1 of 2 Ft. McPherson tents. This is used as dry storage for non-electronic science things, tools, extra heaters, misc. items that can be out in the elements. There was 6 ft of wind packed snow at this spot. We didn’t set up the second tent because we figured we don’t need it now with the food storage and extra weatherhaven…. And there is about 6-8 ft of hard windpacked snow in that spot. We will wait until the end of snowmelt for this.
- Set up and installed prospector diesel stove in small weatherhaven. We have been running this 24-7 and it keeps the other weatherhaven toasty for storage of electronic stuff (our science gear ie ebees, rtk) are in here along with Aarons scatterometer overnight. My only concern is the heater will use a lot more diesel than we had hoped for. But we should be fine for the next 4+ weeks where we need it. We have also been using it to melt snow for water. This puppy puts out so much heat, and with the addition of some wooden shelves for storage make the small weatherhaven feel like a sauna! Could this be our next camp project?
- Build shelves in Seacan and organized all cans/ dry goods on shelves. I am not sure if you have seen the pictures (see twitter) but Vicky stocked the shelves and did an amazing job! Plenty of food and we were able to get rid of almost all of the cardboard filling the majority of a helicopter sling with crushed empty boxes. This will help food orders in the future a lot! We still have 2 silver crates full of dried goods that are being stored in the small weatherhaven for now. The problem is that the seacan is cold at this time of year and so things are freezing/ some exploding (RIP pickles) and in the summer I can imagine it will get very HOT.
- Installed new batteries for solar and reinstalled- The solar is now working great with the new batteries. I also had to rewire and mount a few solar panels that were sheered from their brackets during the harsh winter season. Once reconnected our solar input tripled (we were running 2 series in parallel going into the solar charge). We may end up building our own custom solar array rack out of spare lumber to allow us to capture the full solar potential during the 24-7 daily light.
- Installed the new stove, sink, and kitchen. Evan and I build some cupboards for the kitchen with shelves that frees up a lot of space! The new stove is working great and hooked up to our 100lb tank, but I have adapters for the 20lb tanks as well. I am not sure how long this will last but we will find out.
- Renovated outhouse to fit 2 incinolet toilets. We had planned on building an addition to the outhouse, but once we removed the ecojohn we found there was ample room for both of the incinolet toilets. We “adapted” the existing building to house both toilets separated by a wall in the middle. Both doors are facing east and the exhaust vents go out a small hole to the west. I had to hardwire the 30A plugs on the toilets to a wall receptacle where I sacrificed 2 extension cords that run to the new generator. They seem to be working great… minus the HUGE power draw. Even now, working much better than the shitty (pun intended) Ecojohn toilets. Anyone know what to do with a 150 pound toilet that doesn’t work? Would make a great yacht anchor I imagine….
- Set up new Honda generator. Evan and I build a wooden box to host the new generator. This muffles the loud thumping of the larger generator. We had to put it as close as possible to the outhouse to reach the cords for the toilets. Each toilet needs its own 120V 20A outlet or it will keep blowing the fuse on the generator. This uses up both outlets on the generator, meaning you can only have either 2 toilets running, or 1 toilet and the weatherhaven. After 2 full days of testing we have found that the new generator is a fuel hog, going through a full 20L jerry can a day (roughly 8 hrs run time at half load) minimum. Therefore we are trying to limit its use to running the toilets, and if we do not need the toilets but need AC power for the weatherhaven we are still using the Honda 3000W as it is much more efficient. Still working out the kinks, but at least we have working toilets and power!
- Since we did not use the new lumber for the outhouse we are going to build 1-2 more tent platforms, bringing us up to 9. For times when we have more than that (rarely) we should have spare plywood people can put under their tents- or they can set up on the snow.
- The internet appears to be working well, however it goes through regular short losses of signal. We’re talking 5 min max drop times before it reconnects. We have been playing around with it a bit and there seems to me no rhyme or reason as to the issues. During the day it works great- I was even able to skype the other day, but once you have 4+ users it can be pretty useless at times. We are researching ways to increase our signal strength before we would have to resort to a professional realignment.
- All in all the weather has been amazing out here! Sunny most days with highs in the low teens. Once you get out and moving you barely need a jacket. No signs of snowmelt either which is awesome news for us.
Science things
We have not had much time for anything other than camp stuff. However as we near the end of my big to-do list we are thinking about starting up some science things to prepare for the end of winter surveys.
Yesterday Evan and I went searching for the rebar benchmark to set up and test our new RTK system. Unfortunately the location is not “well” known….. as in I have the coordinated down to the cm but handheld GPS units are +/- 5m accuracy… That’s a big search radius for a small piece of rebar. The area is also covered by a 1m well packed snow drift. After hours of digging in the snow we ended up with a ~20m x ~7m pit in the area we thought it should be... key word here is Thought… no matter how certain we were we could not find our little rebar friend. We even went back and looked at old photos for reference but each photo told a different story of where the point should be. We felt like treasure hunters searching for a mysterious mythical treasure, and just like most treasure hunters we came up empty handed. So we eventually gave up and set up a new temporary reference point for our base station and logged a few hours of GNSS points to send away for a PPP assessment. This service improves the accuracy of an unknown point down to within a few centimeters.
Once we set up the base and test the new RTK unit further we will disperse wooden cross-shaped markers across Evans lakes basins that serve as georefference ground control points with cm accuracy. We use Orange survey stakes in an X shape staked to the ground with rebar posts (if we can drive them into the ground). We are thinking of doing half on bare ground and half on the snow surface with the latter needing re-surveyed as the melt progresses. We will resurvey the GCPs is Siksik as well. These are necessary for flying the UAS and creating highly accurate digital surface models.
Evan has noticed that his weirs in the channel outlets of BBL and LBL are completely covered in ice! By covered I mean they are buried under the channel ice and cannot be found! These are weirs where the side walls were 3-4ft high! This is going to complicate our snowmelt runoff surveys as the weirs will likely be useless. We will have to resort to using the channel ice for our channel dimensions and record how it changes across the melt. The siksik weir has a similar affect, but the channel ice is only covering the bottom V portion, so the water level recorders in the stilling well may still function properly.
Before the arrival of the rest of our crew this weekend we plan on testing the following equipment to ensure it works for the end of winter snow surveys:
o Leica GNSS RTK unit
o EBEE
o EBEE RTK and RTK base station
o Magnaprobe
We are visiting the Inuvik Jr High School on Wednesday afternoon to give a talk about some of the research projects we are working on in Trail Valley Creek. Evan and I are skidooing back to meet the rest of our crew. I have put together a presentation with a brief overview of our research and why we are out here studying the snow. We are very excited to be invited into the schools to share some of our research findings and hope to educate the students on the importance of understanding how a changing climate is affecting the hydrological systems in their own back yards. Keep posted for some pictures from this visit. I will post a copy of some of the slides too so everyone can share in our work. Unfortunately I won’t be able to include some pretty sweet UAS drone videos.. .and my wonderful clipart animations. If you want the real deal just contact me and I am happy to share.
The winds are beginning to pick up. That means there is snow blowing all across the barren tundra, creating these nice fresh drifts around any obstacle. Very neat to watch these small snowdrifts form, however when all of that snow is being blown into your tent it’s not so fun.
Pictures to follow shortly! the internet is not being very cooperative.
Till next time.
B
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Playing around with my Phantom taking some aerial videos of TVC. One short clip of many. Sadly the internet wouldn’t let me upload my full video. Note the 8ft Ft. McPherson tent buried in the snow out back… We had to dig all of that snow out
A timelapse of the moon and northern lights over camp last night. This is viewed looking directly south, since we are almost too far north to see the northern lights, as they often appear across a band of 60°N.