August 14, 2013

Thank you all, for contributing, reading and supporting our activities!

This is the last blog entry for the summer 2013 season.

Finally, everyone has returned safely and without major hassle, injuries or other happenings! We wish to thank all contributors to this successful expedition and hope you have enjoyed reading this blog. We will be back next year with more information. We also thank all of our readers for their interest!

Trailer

Let’s finally quickly review the main actors and contributors to this expedition in short.

Expedition lead in all situations: Gabriela Schaepman-Strub (Photo: T. Maximov, July 2013).

Trofim Maximov, the best science and host you can get in Yakutia (Photo: G. Schaepman-Strub, August, 2013).

Stas Ksenofontov, the organizing expert for everything! (Photo: M. Schaepman, August 2013).

Maitane Iturrate, the ‘crazy Spanish’, who never stopped working (Photo: G. Schaepman-Strub, July 2013).

Inge Juszak, field work under any circumstances (Photo: G. Schaepman-Strub, July 2013).

Olga Khitun, never resting to get all (!) species determined (Photo: G. Schaepman-Strub, July 2013).

Lena, a cook no one wanted to miss any meal … (Photo: M. Schaepman, July 2013).

Lena’s son Ilya, a great help in- and outside the kitchen (Photo: L. Schaepman, July 2013).

Angela Gallagher, whose life is more Tundra than anything else (Photo: L. Schaepman, July 2013).

Bingxi Li – what did I photograph again?? (Photo: G. Schaepman-Strub, July 2013).

Linus Schaepman, returning ‘every year again’ (Photo: M. Schaepman, July 2013).

Anne Schaepman – ‘reindeers do not need to go back to school …’ (Photo: M. Schaepman, July 2013).

Michael Schaepman, responsible for the URPP GCB (Photo: G. Schaepman-Strub, August 2013).

A farewell from Spasskaya Pad (from left: Rikie Suzuki, Stas, Gabriela and Anne, Linus, Michael, Nikita, Kyril, and Trofim (Photo: Roman, August 2013).

Guarantees the smoothest rides: Bukhanka and its driver Wasya (Photo: M. Schaepman, August 2013).

Guarantees the fastest transfers: Iwan and his outboard engine … (Photo: M. Schaepman, August 2013).

We will miss the fantasitc nature and wildlife (Photo: M. Schaepman, July 2013).

Let’s meet next year in the tundra again, maybe behind the Alnus 11 bush … (Photo: M. Schaepman, July, 2013).

Acknowlegements

We acknowledge support from the University of Zurich Research Priority Program on Global Change and Biodiversity (URPP GCB) for test site maintenance, project support and travel (G. Schaepman-Strub, M. Iturrate, M. Schaepman).

We acknowledge support from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF), project 140631 (Inge Juszak).

We rely on equipment and clothing from Transa.

August 13, 2013

It is 10 o’clock and everything is packed and ready. In less than two hours, we will be at Yakutsk airport, heading back home. Today will be a long, long day (a day of 32 hours incuding the change of time zones).

We arrived at Yakutsk, again, yesterday morning, after having our last breakfast in Spasskaya Pad. It was really weird returning back to “civilization”, and to have a proper bed, a toilet at only one meter from the room and not at few hundred meters, supermarkets with a huge number of options in food… Indeed, we bought some food for lunch and it took us ages to decide what to buy. Once back to the accommodation, we needed to decide what to eat (so many options, including fruit, of course!!).

Our stay in Spasskaya Pad was great, like a kind of relaxing holiday. After the initial shock of not be able to do what we had planned, we decided to enjoy the experience of being in the Siberian taiga as much as possible. And the experience started really well, dinner and “bania”… our second “bania” in less than one week! The following day, Saturday, we had a guided tour of the installations, visiting and climbing all the measurement towers and enjoying the views. We were really lucky of having Aya as guide, we had lots of fun and lots of berries… we stopped every few meters and picked some berries. And after finishing the guided tour, he offered us birch sap juice, very tasty.

Spasskaya Pad flux tower (Photo: M. Iturrate, August 2013).

Spasskaya Pad flux tower (Photo: M. Iturrate, August 2013).

The afternoon was a working afternoon. My vegetation samples were dry, so time for weighing them. Inge helped me to write down the weight (thank you), so we managed to finish half of the samples before dinner. Although the other half was left, we decided to continue next morning as we were exhausted. It was a good decision because we were able to join the karaoke session. We sang and danced, first European songs and then Russian songs. It was wonderful. We feel really integrated, like two more Sakha people. After transforming the karaoke session into a disco session, I had time to listen to a couple of songs that one of the students, who attended the summer school, composed in Sacha, and to Stas playing the khomus, a traditional musical instrument used in the Sakha republic. I had even the opportunity of playing it, quite difficult.

Sunday morning was for finishing the weighing of my samples. The afternoon was for walking in the forest and picking berries. We only had a little problem, a summer storm. We were at almost two kilometers away from the research station when it started to rain cats and dogs. We returned completely wet, but with a big reward (just see the picture!!).

Vaccinium vitis-idea berry collection (Photo: M. Iturrate, August 2013).

Vaccinium vitis-idea berry collection (Photo: M. Iturrate, August 2013).

During the evening-night, we were talking a lot to other people, learning new Russian words and exchanging cultural facts of the different countries (Japan, Germany, Russia, and Spain). I could even exchange some knitting patterns with the cook. She saw me knitting my cardigan and offered me going to her house in order to show me all the winter socks she was knitting. They were really beautiful and colorful. It was amazing how we managed to understand each other.

It was a bit sad to say goodbye to the people yesterday morning. But, who knows! Maybe next year, we can also spend some days in Spasskaya Pad before returning home.

Only half an hour to go to the airport. It will be a bit funny being again in Switzerland after such an experience. I am looking forward to starting processing all the data collected, but first a couple of weeks in Spain to rest and recover after so many weeks without stopping. It has been really nice to share this experience with all of you. Next year, more! Have a good summer.

Yakutsk, August 8, 2013

Communicating an overall impression of the Tundra and Taiga is tricky. In particular when we are used to see a mountain upfront every few kilometers, such as usually in Switzerland :-). The open and wide skies are really impressive out here!

We therefore share a few examples of panoramic images, giving a little impression of the wide and open space in Siberia! However, there is nothing like being you yourself out there to experience this unique scenery!

Around Kytalyk

Panoramic view of the Kytalyk research station (image center facing north) (Photo: M. Schaepman, July 2013) (full resolution).

Panoramic view of the Kytalyk area from across the Berelech river on a nearby pingo (Photo: M. Schaepman, July 2013) (full resolution).

Around Oyotung

Indigirka river near Oyotung (Photo: M. Schaepman, July 2013) (full resolution).

Tussock tundra near Oyotung. The small ditch to the right is a fragment of an unused supply road for abandoned infrastructure on the nearby hills and can be seen on Google maps (Photo: M. Schaepman, July 2013) (full resolution).

Around Yakutsk

Buluus Icing

Icings (also called ‘Aufeis’ or ‘Naled’) usually occur when groundwater is discharged into a river. The (relative to outside temperatures) warm groundwater discharges also during freeze conditions and supplies the icing with water all year round. It freezes rapidly in winter, resulting in a layered structure of the icing. Icings vary substantially temporally and spatially. We visited Buluus icing south of Yakutsk – fascinating to see (in particular when temperatures rise to more than 30 deg C (which was obviously not the case when we were there …)).

Buluus icing near Yakutsk (Photo: M. Schaepman, August 2013).

Panoramic view of Buluus icing (Photo: M. Schaepman, August 2013) (full resolution).

Lena river

The Lena river originates in the Baikal mountains and enters the Siberian lowlands near Yaktusk. Due to high precipitation in July and August, the water level was unusually high in 2013 and much sediments were carried by the river. Maybe therefore fishing was not such a success as planned …

Fishing success in the Lena river (Photo: M. Schaepman, August 2013).

Sandbank in the middle of the Lena river approximately 50 km north of Yakutsk (1660 km to mouth, 2740 km to source) (Photo: M. Schaepman, August 2013) (full resolution).

Lena pillars view from top (Photo: M. Schaepman).

Lena pillars seen from the newly established platform of this Unesco World Heritage site (Photo: M. Schaepman, August, 2013) (full resolution).

Elanka, a small settlement across the famous Lena pillars (Photo: M. Schaepman, August 2013) (full resolution).

Meet Bolot Bochkarev

Bolot is the man behind the fantastic blog ‘AskYakutia.com’. Bolot acts as journalist, fixer and guide. We were lucky to travel with him for two days in Yakutia. He not only managed to organize earlier this year a helicopter tour around Yakutsk, but also travels with raindeer herders in wintertime and helps movie teams to access the far Siberian north. Should you need any expedition support or information on Yakutia, AskYakutia or contact Bolot – an invaluable source of information for all adventurers – we much enjoyed staying with him!

Bolot Bochkarev, the driving force behind AskYakutia.com on the Buluus icing (Photo: M. Schaepman, August 2013).

August 7, 2013

The region around Kytalyk is characterized by some of the World’s strongest spatial gradients. Most conspicuous is the temperature gradient. The northern part of the region borders the Siberian Sea and is more temperate than the inland, although it is still extreme compared to our sense of temperate. The figure below is a satellite-based land-surface temperature map  that illustrates how, in winter (left), temperatures drop to minus 40 degrees in the south to ‘only’ about minus 20 degrees at the coast: a gradient over a distance of less than 300 km. In summer (right), this gradient is inverted, thus amplifying differences between the regions. The field team is in the bright red region (green dot in the summer map) and therefore temperature seems no concern at the moment. Reality, however, is not always as it should be (see blog post “the weather in Kytalyk this summer“).

Land-surface temperature from MODIS sensor (Source: https://lpdaac.usgs.gov/products/modis_products_table/mod11a2).

Vegetation systems strongly react to various climatological constraints: in winter, it is dark (radiation-constraint), cold (temperature-constraint) and frozen/snow-covered (water-constraint plus nutrient-constraint) and therefore uninhabitable for plants that need these elements for growth. Plant growth during the summer, on the other hand, is intense. The figure below illustrates this. It shows NDVI values, which form a spectral proxy for vegetation activity and range between 0 (no vegetation) and 1 (full cover of lush vegetation). The time range in this figure is May until October, which underlines how short the growing season is.

Series of MODIS NDVI images for the 2011 growing season (Source: https://lpdaac.usgs.gov/products/modis_products_table/mod13a1).

Despite this time-constraint (another one) of a short growing season, the arctic tundra plays an important role in the world’s carbon budget. Per unit area, it sequesters about a third of the yearly amount of carbon compared to forests, but in a very short time. The changes in the carbon budget with changes in climate may therefore be substantial and it is important to closely monitor variations in the growing season. Land-surface phenology is the study of these intra-annual dynamics and nowadays, we have more than 30 years of global NDVI data available for this purpose. Irene Garonna, a PhD student in remote sensing and affiliated to the Global Change and Biodiversity URPP, focuses on this type of vegetation dynamics. A quick look into her analyses tells us how the growing season varies spatially and how it changes over time. The figures below look different from the previous ones, because they are based on other satellite sensors with a coarser resolution (8×8 km, as opposed to 0.5×0.5 km) and they have a different projection (degrees instead of UTM). Nevertheless, the region is the same and from the map on the left, we can clearly distinguish the same coast-to-inland gradient as we saw before, but this time in length of growing season (number of days per year, 30-year average). The shorter growing seasons are in the north, where snowmelt starts later in the year (see the radar blog  of July 25^th). The map at the right, however, depicts the change in length of growing season over the past 30 years and indicates a lengthening of about 1 day/year in these northern areas. This might be linked to warming conditions in the arctic and a possible retreat of the sea ice. These and other effects along latitudinal gradients are research topics of the URPP.

Left: average length of growing season (days). Right: corresponding temporal changes (days/year). Both are based on 1982-2011 data. (Source: http://www.mdpi.com/journal/remotesensing/special_issues/monitoring_global)

Kytalyk, August 5, 2013

Today it’s finally my turn to write a blog entry. I changed the topic from “The 14 most urgent things to do before we leave” to “The weather in Kytalyk this summer”. “Up and running” would also be a good title. But let’s stick to the weather. It’s quite a nice topic as I can make a blog entry with lots of pictures. Let’s start with the temperature. It has been really cold for most of the time, maximum between 10 and 15°C, so I usually take my down jacket to go for breakfast, lunch or dinner in the dining room. Lena cooks in her part of the building so that the dining room has the same temperature as outside, just with less wind. The temperature sensors of my little stations recorded a maximum of 26°C on 11th of July. That day was really nice and warm, but two days later the maximum daily temperature was just 7°C. So it changes rather quickly, but bad weather seems to be more stable than good weather. Cool temperatures have the advantage of less mosquitos and it is even better if there is also some wind. I can say that each weather has an advantage. Only rain is not very good for most measurements, but we had an extremely dry summer this year. It hardly rained and usually just 0mm (as the weather forecast says).

During the first half of our stay in Kytalyk we had a lot of wind, but much less in the last couple of weeks. With no wind at all the river looks like a mirror. We had a wonderful evening and I took the picture below of the boat coming back from a little trip. It’s Lena and some guests from Chokurdakh who were here for few days.

A boat arriving at the field station on a calm evening. Photo I. Juszak, August 2013

Most amazing about the weather in Kytalyk are the clouds. They change very quickly and ten minutes can make a big difference. The funny thing about the clouds here is that they seem to be very close. It looks as if you just need to stand on the nearest pingo to touch them.

We get a lot of different clouds here. Photo I. Juszak, August 2013.

We get a lot of different clouds here. Photo I. Juszak, August 2013.

We get a lot of different clouds here. Photo I. Juszak, August 2013.

Most beautiful are the clouds in the midnight sun. Even now, the sun is still above the horizon at midnight. I take a picture every day before going to bed and usually the view is great.

Midnight sun last Friday. Photo I. Juszak, August 2013.

The summer here is already coming to an end, the nights get colder and we got the first frost. The first shrubs have turned into nice colours, the birches have started getting red and the willows yellow. It will still take some time, but we can already see some changes. I really hoped for the cloudberries to be ripe before we leave, but I think they will not make it in the next 3 days. Well, maybe next year!

Kytalyk, July 31, 2013

This is my finally summer in Kytalyk and I will be leaving in a few days to return to Amsterdam.  I have been lucky enough to have travelled to Kytayk five times, both during the summer and during the Siberian spring where temperatures can be as low as -20^oC. So I have very mixed feelings about leaving Kytalyk for the last time, with very little chance of ever returning to such a remote part of the world again. A large part of me will be very happy to be back in the land of running water, hot showers, and if reports from Europe are correct, I will not need my thermal underwear on a nearly daily basis. But I will miss Kytalyk, well elements of Kytalyk, and the whole field work experience. I don’t think anyone ever left here missing the mosquitoes or the toilets.

Although field work can have its daily grind of difficulties and dismay leaving you wondering if you are cut out for science at all, it does have some unexpected benefits such as a cure for repetitive strain injury and weight loss despite hovering up every bit of food put in front of you. Nonetheless,  one of the best things about Kytalyk is the tiny temporary community of people that spend the summer here. Currently the Kytalyk population is 11, including Lena our wonderful cook and her two year old son and Dasha. We all work quite independently, coming together during meal times. Breakfast is quiet and sleepy, but at lunch and dinner everyone is a lot more animated. We sit around chatting and discussing the strangest topics happily unable to determine who may be correct due the lack of internet access.  The conversation flows freer and becomes more whacky as the supervisors depart, but regardless the conversation around the kitchen table is a fantastic way to defuse any fieldwork induced frustrations that may have built up during the course of the day.

So for me I will miss the kitchen the most, the discussions and all the laughing. Kytalyk is without a doubt a beautiful place and I feel very lucky to be here, most of the time, but I don’t think it would be the same without the little community thrown together in the middle of nowhere.

Dinner time for our little community in Kytalyk (Photo: A. Gallagher , 31 July 2013)

July 25, 2013

The following images illustrate the strong responses seen in radar backscatter data when the winter snow melts in the region, usually in late May and June.  The data shown below was acquired by the ASAR sensor on the ENVISAT satellite in 2010.  The data was acquired using the sensor’s “wide swath” (WS) ScanSAR mode, whereby beams are subsequently scanned across the landscape, enabling large areas to be covered in a single acquisition.  The region shown is approximately 317km by 332km in size.  ASAR WS medium resolution products were used, provided with a native 75m sample interval (150m resolution) in ground range geometry (azimuth and cross-range directions).  The datasets were radiometrically calibrated using standard models and then geometrically terrain corrected using the SRTM30 1km resolution height model presented in a UTM map projection. The region is relatively flat, with some undulations visible in the southeast that could benefit from the use of a higher quality height model. Some small radiometric artefacts aligned in the satellite path (azimuth) direction are visible at the beam-boundaries due to the ScanSAR acquisition methodology.  However, much stronger variations are caused by land cover changes taking place between the different acquisition dates.  Dark backscatter indicates wet snow, while higher values can derive either from dry snow or snow-free land cover.  Note how the melting begins in the south, progressing slowly northwards until there is none left by late June. The upcoming Sentinel-1 series of satellites, the first of which is due to be launched in early 2014, will be able to provide such observations with spatial and temporal resolutions both improved with respect to what was possible using ENVISAT ASAR.

ENVISAT ASAR Data provided by the European Space Agency, 2010.

Kytalyk, July 23, 2013

Last evening at Kytalyk station, after living and working out in the wild for 3 weeks! Usually it’s a strange moment just before leaving – packing, thinking about when to come back next time, being sad to leave this interesting, quiet place where you hear the boats from kilometers away, but happy to go home, see the family and get back to civilization. This year it’s different. My family has arrived a few days ago, and I am happy to show the young buzzard’s nest, to walk through the tundra, teach them how to take active layer thickness measurements and notes, discover a stranded weather balloon. So no hurry to get home! Instead we will be driving up north to Russkoe Ustje. It will be a long journey, somebody said minimum 3 hours, another estimate was 5 hours, and we wanted to visit a hillside on the way to evaluate if it would be of scientific interest. The weather forecasts are not very promising, 3-6°C with some rain. We will need all our clothes tomorrow! We will keep you updated about our adventure to the north!

Nest with 6 chicks of rough-legged buzzards. Photo: M. Schaepman, 22 July, 2013.

Measuring shrub position and extension, with the helping hand of a young secretary. Photo: M. Schaepman, 21 July 2013.

Taking vegetation relevees on the pingo south of the Berelech river, with Olga Khitun and the Schaepman family, who is testing ecotourism at Kytalyk station. The kids are impressed by the tundra life and seem to bother much less than adults about the mosquitos. Photo: O. Khitun, 21 July 2013.

Kytalyk, July 22, 2013

The area around Chokurdah is ideal to study the effects of climate change on vegetation and feedbacks, as over a relatively short distance at least five different vegetation zones are present that can be studied. So far we only concentrated on Kytalyk (southern hypoarctic tundra according to the Russian classification after B. Yurtsev et al., 1978), but we will evaluate an expansion during our boat trip soon. Last two days I got the chance to explore the more southern area of Chokurdah. Our Japanese colleagues, headed by Atsuko Sugimoto, invited me to the opening ceremony of their new tundra-taiga forest transition station. During the past few years, they were active at several experimental sites with isotope measurements for an improved understanding of the carbon and water fluxes. They now established a more permanent site with a 3m tower with instrumentation to assess the carbon, water, and energy balance.

The celebration started with a scientific presentation of the research by Trofim Maximov and Atsuko Sugimoto to the government of the region in the municipality building of Chokurdah. The presentations were followed by a few questions by locals: “Could the measuring towers be used to enhance the local mobile phone network?” “Is global warming really true (they had heard about the fact that not all scientists agree)?” “Can you help to assess the problem of the recent strong easterly winds that flooded Russkoe Ustje and destroyed the large permafrost cellar needed for storing the fish?”.

Two Eveni women in their role as shaman during the opening ceremony of Kodak station. While one is singing and playing the drum, the other is sacrificing food to the gods of nature. Photo: G. Schaepman-Strub, 16 July 2013.

In the afternoon, we had the unique opportunity to participate in an excursion to the new station. It was the combination of a scientific excursion, finally seeing some trees again, and an ethnological experience. It is a custom out here to invite a Shaman to connect to the gods of nature. The three Eveni women made a fire, they sang, danced and sacrificed food to the fire. They wanted to do the ceremony directly in front of the tower. This was followed by immediate protest by the scientists, who tried not to trample the vegetation around the tower when establishing it during the past few weeks. On top of that, the fire would be disturbing the CO2 concentration series quite a bit! The Shaman could not understand that a fire could not be lit at the most important spot and that people should walk on the wooden boardwalks only. Finally a compromise was found – the fire was lit behind the official sign of the celebration, a few hundred meters away from the tower, hopefully out of its measurement footprint.

At the end of the day a party followed at the local canteen, and the next morning an interview for Trofim Maximov at the local newspaper office to report about a recent visit of the journalist to Kytalyk station. He was visiting us by ponton when we unloaded the wood. During his walk around the station he was mostly fascinated by the warming experiment due to the large solar panels and the batteries. So more publicity for the research at Kytalyk station in the local news!

Group photo of the celebration for the opening of Kodak station.

Kytalyk, July 17, 2013

Hi everyone :-)! This is Bingxi Li from Wageningen University, the Netherlands this time. Today I volunteered to write a new blog and this time I will try to show you the beauty of eastern Siberian tundra through my eyes.

This is my third summer season in Kytalyk nature reserve, northeastern Siberia. The views and landscapes around our base have become so familiar to me. From the ground, the view is usually far from fascinating, compared with the satellite image of this area. It is a vast flat area with only short growing vegetation, while the only high points in our sight are a few pingos, one of which around 4 kilometers away is the background of most our pictures. In spite of this “boring” landscape, I am still largely obsessed by Siberia. The unpredictable arctic weather not only makes troubles to our daily life and research activities, but also switches the colors of the land, especially at midnight. The midnight sunshine here is gorgeous in summer. The low sun angle creates extremely long shadows so that the contrast ratio is high. The red or orange sunshine softly covers everything of this land and coloring everything. When the clouds partly cover the sun, countless rays of light penetrate through the gaps, shining out with great brilliancy. The various cloud shapes in the crystal blue sky add extra beauty to this landscape. Everybody in Kytalyk is so addicted to the midnight view. According to my unreliable guess, people need significantly more time to go to the  toilet at night than during the day, simply because we always waste some additional minutes on appreciating the beautiful view. Thus, going to the toilet with camera is a new fashion in Kytalyk. Personally, I cannot remember how many gigabytes I spent in storing the picture of the night sunshine with the background of the pingo, but still I could not stop myself taking pictures from almost the same angle now and then. It is simply so … beautiful!

Midnight photo session in Ktalyk (Photo: B. Li, July 2013).

Inge in the twilight (Photo: B. Li, July 2013).

The wild life here is also amazing. The summer is the liveliest time in Siberia. Many birds fly thousands of miles from China, Southeast Asia and even Australia to the very north, their summer destination. Creating and feeding new generations is the reason of the great migrations. Several couples of tundra swans have their nest near our base, they probably just come from Huanghe delta near the Yellow Sea and the blue throat thrush, a beautiful large robin-like species with marvelous songs, always flies around our kitchen, might just have finished their warm winter holiday in Hongkong one month ago. Rough legged buzzard couples are from Mongolia or Southern Far East Russia. Sandhill cranes, the relatives of the Kytalyk star species Siberian white crane, come from the US and Canada. Sometimes, I have the illusion that I am just one of millions of them, only for a different purpose. When I see these birds, I often imagine that maybe we have seen each other long before in my lovely hometown far in the south and accidentally meet each other again here, like two old friends.

Life is amazing, isn’t it? (Photo: B. Li, July 2013).