August 8, 2013

Tomorrow, we are leaving Kytalyk. It seems that it was yesterday when we arrived by boat, but five weeks have gone. The last week has been specially stressing. As Angela Gallagher told us: “the last week, you will be running as chicks”. And that is exactly what I have been doing all week: running and running, trying to finish everything. Thanks to this and to Bingxi Li, my nickname among the people in Kytalyk and IBPC is “the crazy Spanish”. I haven’t been able to do everything I wanted, and I have lots of data for the winter. After finishing the measurements of plant traits at plot scale, I started with plant traits at individual scale. Now, I have an important “library” of leaf optical properties and plant architecture for all the species in my plots.

Betula nana branch from one of the ridge plots (Photo: M. Iturrate, August 2013).

Betula nana branch from one of the ridge plots (Photo: M. Iturrate, August 2013).

As today is the last day, I have to do something that I promised to the master student from the Netherlands, Judith. It is twenty minutes before dinner time. The air temperature is 13.7°C, and we are ready for it: swimming in the river Berelech (water temperature: 12.1°C). Before having time for changing my mind and while Judith and Inge are taking off the winter clothes, I jump into the water. First, the feeling of not having enough air to breath, then the feeling of thousands of needles in your skin, after that a throat as if you were eating ice, and then, just time to enjoy. It is really great. But it is dinner time, so after only five minutes, we have to go.

From left to right: Inge, Judith and “the crazy Spanish” swimming in the river Berelech (Photo: J. Limpens, August 2013).

The Kytalyk farewell dinner is great, even better than lunch (reindeer soup): Buckwheat with chicken, fish eggs with garlic and Lena’s famous fish pie. It will be weird not having any more this kind of meals or not sharing them with the same people anymore.

August 9, 2013

Leaving Kytalyk

It is one o’clock in the afternoon and we are still waiting for leaving Kytalyk. Our flight is at 16.20 hrs, we have two hours by boat to Chokurdakh, and the boat driver and Artiom are still trying to repair the fuel generator. We haven’t had electricity for the last two days. Finally, they decide to take the generator to Chokurdakh, so at 13.30h we are finally on the boat. We have contradictory feelings: we are really happy because in a few days we will be at home (and, in my case, enjoying the Spanish summer for two weeks), but, at the same time, we are a bit sad. It has been a great experience. I learned lots of new things and I have many new experiences. Everything here is magnified, especially feelings are really intense. Lots of work and little free time, but I don’t complain about that, it was really nice work for the first time with these tiny plant species. The only “problem” is the small progress of my cardigan.

Cardigan knitting progress in Kytalyk (Photo: I. Juszak, August 2013).

At last, in Chokurdakh. The trip by boat has been a bit shaking and uncomfortable, but we are again back to civilization. We have not enough time to enjoy it because we are a bit late for our flight, so just time for throwing our luggage in the back of the van and directly to the airport. The flight is not delayed, so after carrying our luggage to the plane and helping to load it into the plane, we take-off at 16.20h. This time, we get two window seats and nobody next to us. Unluckily, the weather is too cloudy to enjoy the views during the whole flight, only the last hour and a half is quite O.K.

Ready to land in Yakutsk (Photo: M. Iturrate, August 2013).

We land in Yakutsk after three hours of flight. Again, we have to help to unload our luggage from the plane. When we arrive at the terminal, a smiley familiar face is waiting for us. Wasja is waving his hands, as friendly as always. We made lots of plans for our stay in Yakutsk, including two showers every day, at least. But instead of going to the accommodation, Wasja brings us to Spasskaya Pad research station in order to dry my vegetation samples before leaving the country, so second shaking trip of the day, but this time by car!

August 1, 2013

The regular reader of this blog might have noticed that the original group has split up into two parties: Maitane Iturrate and Inge Juszak will be staying for another 2 weeks in the field site at Kytalyk to continue the measurements, while the rest of the party has left the core site. We first travelled to the north of Chokurdakh to explore the Оyotung (Оиотунг) hill-site area as potential new measurement site. A well-drained area, with highest hills reaching more than 300m a.s.l. The Soviet Union army constructed a gravel road to the top hills, leaving two heavy machines behind. The top of the hills are covered by lichen tundra, with increasing plant diversity towards the river lowlands. The zone along the Indigirka shows the highest plant diversity. Beautiful flowers, including thyme and arnica, reminding us the Swiss alpine flora. Oyutung was a special experience. We originally planned to visit this site for a few hours only, on the way to Russkoe Ustje. As the trip to the north was not possible as planned, a group of biologists and zoologists offered us to stay with them for a few days. Their cook provided us with fish for breakfast, lunch and dinner and with tea, all cooked on the open fire.

3 times fish a day – bucket with fried Chir (Photo: M. Schaepman, July 2013).

Cook preparing Jukala. Photo: M. Schaepman, July 2013.

At Oyotung there was a small fishermen’s hut where we could sleep, three persons on old, narrow sofas, two on the floor. During the last night, two local young men entered the hut, bringing some Jukula (air-dried fish) as a present for Maxim (whoever this is…). They had heard that somebody was using their hut and wanted to check – at 5 am…. They were obviously quite drunk and just wanted to find a place to rest, but we had to argue very carefully not to make them upset. When Michael got up and talked to Olga in English they finally understood that we were foreigners and immediately said – no problem. Olga, knowing how to deal with such situations, sent them to the big house where the local cook told them to leave. We finally heard their boat going off and felt asleep again. The next morning we drove to Chokurdakh on a very still Indigirka and flew out to Yakutsk. Lucky again with the flight, wonderful weather and beautiful views!

Last views over the Chokurdakh area on our flight back to Yakutsk. What a landscape, accessible only on the rivers or through the air as most of it is covered by lakes, rivers, and wetlands. Photo: G. Schaepman-Strub, July 2013.

After a dinner back in civilization (the best salad I ever had in my life Olga left us for St. Petersburg. On Sunday we were invited by Trofim Maximov to visit Spasskaya Pad, a research station of the Sakha Fluxnet. The site hosts two carbon and energy flux measurement towers of 32 m, reaching above the forest canopy, one in larch forest, the other one in a pine dominated forest. What an experience to climb up and see the forest from the top! These towers provide some of the very scarce observational data of the extensive continuous permafrost area in NE Siberia, with continental climate, to the scientific community. Thank you Trofim, Vasya, Stas, Roman, cook, and all others for safely driving us to the station, hosting us, guiding us through the site, for the bania, the tasty shashlik and mushrooms, and the soccer party!

Entrance sign of Spasskaya Pad research station. Photo: M. Schaepman, July 2013.

Climbing the instrumented flux measurement tower at the larch dominated site in Spasskaya Pad. Linus felt that it was quite windy at 32m…. Photo: G. Schaepman-Strub, July 2013.

While being in and around Yakutsk, we are preparing the documents for exporting our soil samples and discuss with our collaboration partners about future work and infrastructure needed on the Kytalyk site. October is approaching fast, that’s when we will need to submit a detailed research plan (exact location, frequency of data logging, etc.) for summer 2014 to the Russian authorities for their approval. If any big infrastructure or wood for boardwalks needs to be sent north, this should be done in winter time by truck on the frozen rivers, so better to start planning soon! But now it is first time for a few days of vacation to explore the area around Yakutsk! Maitane and Inge will keep you updated in the meantime about the last days of the field campaign in Kytalyk.

PS: Check SRF 4 – heute morgen. I was interviewed over the phone lately and the journalist promised that they will report about our activities on Friday morning.

PPS: The excursion to the Lena pillars was terrific! An interesting boat drive with visits to rock paintings and exploration of the flora. Finally arriving at the pillars – a foggy day, a mystic atmosphere! We were climbing the pillars and had a beautiful view over the immensely wide Lena.

How fortunate we were, visiting this Unesco world heritage site (since 2012) and not meeting any other person! http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1299/

We can definitely advise to all researchers travelling through Yakutsk to take a few days off and get to know this tourist-free region! Beautiful landscapes and flora, very special! If you need help for your trips you might want to check this website http://askyakutia.com/ or get in contact with Bolot Bochkarev who helped us getting around.

Ferry boats crossing the Lena river remain an adventure for us. Photo: G. Schaepman-Strub, July 2013.

On the way to the Lena pillars with our experienced off-road driver Nikolai (Kola). Photo: G. Schaepman-Strub, July 2013.

What seems to be an off-road track is indeed a regular road between two villages. Yakutsk is the capital of a Republic of almost the size of India, yet there are not highways, and dirt roads start immediately outside of the city. Even within a distance of 100km of the city it is advised to use a 4 wheel-drive vehicle. Road conditions are severely impacted by permafrost dynamics and flooding. Winter time allows travelling on the well-maintained ice-roads on the Lena, an experience we save for next time….

The Lena pillars are located within several kilometers along the Lena river, and are partially covered with vegetation which makes them very special. We walked up to the top at one point (about 2 km path, quite steep ;-), felt like walking through a rain forest as the air was very humid, lots of mosses and lichens on the floor and trees. Photo: M. Schaepman, July 2013.

July 27, 2013

Travelling far raises expectations and wishes! Also this time, we were well prepared with questions and wishes before leaving and we try now to answer some of them, prior to returning for more details …

Samuel from the soil group provided the team with tubes to be lowered into the soil at the Kytalyk site – this is well underway! Additionally, in search for a perfect plant nursery for this highly labelled isotope plants, we came across a well suited greenhouse infrastructure and recommend to establish it as a remote MICE station for Samuel.

Unused greenhouse infrastructure at the Ayutun site (Photo: M. Schaepman, July 2013).

Kentaro and Rie from evolutionary biology asked us to spot some plant species they are interested in as well. Due to heavy workload, a junior plant spotter team was put in place and it successfully discovered almost all species on their wish list, but was finally more interested in the more uncommon species such as the one shown below.

Junior plant spotters at work at the Ayutun site, approximately 40km north of Chokurdakh on the Indigirka river banks (Photo: M. Schaepman, July 2013).

Non-photosynthesizing parasitic plant living on Alnus (Photo: M. Schaepman, July 2013).

Wolf, also from evolutionary biology, asked us to look out for flies. Not regular ones, but dungflies. First, we needed to find large grazing herbivores in the tundra (producing dung J). Hearing about herds of 500’000 reindeer one might think of an easy task – but it was not. Luckily, we found a few grazing animals, but the dung was completely free of any flies (it might have been too cold (at around a few centigrade above zero) at the time). With the help of colleagues from Yakutsk, we learned that those dungflies are not abundant in this region and we are looking forward to a more southern location to spotting them! The junior plant spotting team decided spontaneously to convert to a junior animal dissection team …

Muskox (Ovibos moschatus) grazing in the tundra close to Kytalyk (Photo: M. Schaepman, July 2013).

Zoologists from Yakutsk at the Ayutun site, inventorying for the first time small rodents (mice, spitzmaus (sic!) and lemming) populations in the Yakutian tundra (Photo: L. Schaepman, July 2013).

Erich, a remote sensing specialist with a flair for aircraft, is provided with almost unique aircraft spotting images such as the ones below.

Chokurdakh airfield populated with Antanov (AN-2, AN-4?, AN-24) aircraft as well as a MI-8 helicopter. The wingtip to the right is our (cargo-)aircraft (Antanov AN-26-100) with luggage self-loading (Photo: M. Schaepman, July 2013).

Self-unloading cargo and luggage from the Antonov AN-26-100 at Yakutsk airport. Luggage is strictly limited to 20kg per person and every spare gram is filled with frozen fish (Chir), being the heaviest part of the luggage (Photo: L. Schaepman, July 2013).

Finally Reik – a remote sensing Phd – volunteered to join this campaign. Unfortunately, because of many other obligations, he finally was unable to join in. We therefore provide him with a few impressions from the trip from Kytalyk to Ayutun (indeed, we had to skip Russkoye Ustye because of bad weather and unavailable infrastructure).

Ayutun accommodation (sleeping a group of 5) with greenhouse in the back (Photo: M. Schaepman, July 2013).

Indigirka river (foreground), floodplain (middle-ground) and for once a blue sky (background) close to Ayutun (Photo: M. Schaepman, July 26, 2013).

Still no sunset on July 26 in Ayutun (Photo: M. Schaepman, midnight, July 2013).

All you can eat fish every day! (Photo: G. Schaepman-Strub, July 2013).

Ayutun hill site (max elevation about 300 m a.s.l.) with overview of the Indigirka river (as well as cold and bad weather moving out …) (Photo: M. Schaepman, July 2013).

Early morning boat ride on the Indigirka back to Chokurdakh (Photo: M. Schaepman, July 2013).

July 25, 2013

It is late July and outside is windy, rainy and very cold with temperatures of 5 degrees Celsius, but at least no mosquitos. We have reached the point where it is very difficult to know the date or how many days are left before returning home. Every day the same pattern: sleep, get up, have breakfast, work, have lunch, work, have dinner, carry wood, chop wood, sleep…

Today I am starting the second part of my field work. After two intense weeks of hard work with Olga, assessing the biodiversity of the area and the local flora, she left this morning. I am really grateful to her. I have learnt a lot about doing plant community descriptions, relevés, species names and features, how to do a herbarium, and many other things. I had sometimes difficulties in keeping up with her (she is full of energy), but we ended up with 120 species (or maybe more, we must wait for the specialists results for some of them). In addition, I have my first set of results for my plots species composition! It is great being able to see these results after so many hours of work, sweat, tears and nights without sleeping preparing the field plan for this year.

Species composition of the ridge and lowland plots in total number of species (Figure: M. Iturrate, 2013)

The second part of my fieldwork focuses on plant traits and abiotic variables at plot and individual scales, including plant architecture. There is still a lot of work outstanding and only “few” days left, but I am sure I will manage, especially considering that days are very, very long (still 24 hours of daylight). After six plots, the point quadrat method per species has no secrets for me :-). And the soil part is quite entertaining, a bit dirty, but lot of fun.

Soil sampling at the selected plots (Photos: M. Iturrate, 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 19, 2013

The story goes as follows: We had a very long walk yesterday to the pingo (Rus: була), about 4.5km away from our station, with many stops for vegetation relevees to complete our local flora. Wonderful weather, warm, the upcoming wind nicely kept the mosquitoes away. We found many new plant species and Olga is now almost happy with the diversity around Kytalyk. We had nice Lomo for lunch at the top of the pingo, making me and especially Maitane very happy!

Maitane on top of the pingo, yesterday at lunch time. We enjoyed the lomo imported from Spain by Maitane. The pingo has an elevation of about 37m, allowing a beautiful view of the surrounding landscape, hundreds of km2 without people, breathtaking each time again (Photo: G. Schaepman-Strub, 12 July 2013).

We are sweating quite a bit, certainly on the way back. How much we will be enjoying the bania the same evening and refresh, wash the dirty clothes. As we arrive at the station, Bingxi is telling us that plans have changed – the pontoon will be coming tonight, just left Chokurdah at 2pm, no relaxing bania. Like last year, we will need to help with unloading the drift wood collected along the Indigirka that will serve on the station for cooking and heating (it provides heat at least 3 times – during unloading, sawing, chopping and carrying…). A big pile of wood, probably, as last year, and lots of work.

Further we are expecting a heavy diesel generator to start the closed-path methane analyzing system and some gas bottles for calibration of the instrumentation of the VU group. The pontoon is expected at around 7pm. But no boat at that time, and not until 11.30pm either. We are looking out of the window again and again. Last year we could see the pontoon from far away – as a white box moving through the tundra – as only the top of the ship is sticking above the shrub layer along the meandering river. After a short discussion with Lena we decide to go to bed. Knock, knock at our door at 2am – the pontoon is arriving – get up! Crawling out of the warm sleeping bag. A look out of the window. Terribly foggy. The arctic air brought cold weather during the 2.5 hrs we were sleeping. Putting on warmer clothes. Everybody up and waiting, suddenly we see the pontoon from a short distance, ok, let’s walk to the river bank. On our short way we see how the pont0on is coming closer, continuing, slowly, but steadily! What’s up? Did they miss the station due to the fog? Should we go back to sleep? The guy that came by small boat to help us unloading says that there is no problem, this was just the wrong pontoon. The one bringing the wood will arrive in about an hour. No reason to panic….

Lena is starting to clean the tschir that she brought for the Ukha (fish soup, Rus: Уха), we go back and have a cup of tea while waiting. What now? How crazy life is out here sometimes! I start writing. Olga takes her field book and is updating me on the status of the species count in the middle of the night– there were 42 species on Roman’s list, we are at 90 now!

Some people go back to bed. No sound of the large pontoon engine and of course nothing to see through the fog … Ok, then back to bed…. Difficult to fall asleep, the wind is blowing and each time the chimney is shaking we fear that it is the noise of Lena coming up the stairs and waking us up to help, not the only nightmare tonight…. Eventually the pontoon arrives at 6am, we get up and help the local guys to unload the huge pile of wood, they manage the diesel generator and the barrels with fuel and diesel (not even thinking about how heavy all this is – they are carrying the generator to the tundra with the four of them – judging the weight by the heavy stems they carried before, the generator must be REALLY heavy!).

After realizing how long they have been up and working during the night we cannot complain at all anymore that we had to get up for nothing at 2am (their start in Chokurdakh was delayed to 6pm yesterday as they had to wait for some cargo from the plane that arrived on Friday afternoon, collected all the drift wood on the way and arrived this morning at the station)! At 7am an Ukha for them and a rice porridge for us, a few toasts on the good collaboration of locals and scientists, a short discussion with a journalist of the local newspaper who came out to take some pictures (Trofim Maximov from IBPC will provide the text) and off they are on the pontoon to Chokurdakh. Looking out of the window to the foggy river- the pontoon makes some strange noise, redraws, the guys are cleaning the platform.
To Lena who stayed up all night cooking for 17 people, and to the whole crew who came out – сбасиба (thanks a lot!)!!

Pontoon with about a quarter of the wood left. Luckily we were many people to help at 6am this morning, but everybody was very tired after a sleepless night … (Photo: I. Juszak, 13 July 2013).

Unloading the barrels and the diesel generator. We could never have done so by our own! (Photo: I. Juszak, 13 July 2013).

The whole group that helped unloading the boat, while the people from Chokurdakh first collected the drift wood along the river on their way to the station during the night (Photo: I. Juszak, 13 July 2013).

Kytalyk, July 15, 2013

Yesterday we downloaded the first few days of data from the two energy flux towers on wet sedge and dry dwarf birch patches. The data looks reasonably good so far. We did catch a very sunny day resulting in a beautiful irradiance curve. The towers include an albedometer, net short- and longwave radiation sensors, air temperature thermistors, a nadir- and an oblique looking time-lapse camera used for assessing the phenology and snow melt patterns next year, as well as PAR sensors placed below the leaves to measure radiation transmitted through the canopy. Additionally we started with structural measurements – point quadrant measurements to estimate leaf area, active layer thickness (ALT) that is currently around 15cm for Betula nana patches, but already around 20cm for wet sedge areas. We are really looking forward to see how the fluxes of the two patches develop throughout the season and under varying atmospheric conditions.

The two energy flux towers, in the front the wet sedge patch with deep active layer, in the back the slightly elevated dwarf birch patch, both with the corresponding flux tower (Photo: G. Schaepman-Strub, 9 July 2013).

First energy flux measurements on an almost perfectly sunny day (08 July 2013). Plot includes incoming short- and longwave radiation, as well as reflected shortwave and outgoing longwave for shrub-dominated and sedge-dominated patches (Data: I. Juszak, G. Schaepman-Strub, UZH, 2013).

Inge Juszak busy with one of the 81 point quadrant measuring points. We note down every leaf and branch, as well as mosses or background type that the thin lowered needle is hitting at each point. Not an easy job to lean over the 1x1m grid and look through the canopy with a mosquito head-net on and hundreds of our dear friends flying around us (Photo: G. Schaepman-Strub, 9 July 2013).

PS: On the way to the plot I found a first edible mushroom of the season between dwarf birches – unfortunately will not provide a big meal ;-). It is quite tiny as compared to his relatives growing in Europe! More on collecting berries and mushrooms will probably follow when I am off already to Russkoye Ustye, a small village further up North. I remember that in 2010 walking through the tundra was very slow as we constantly stopped to pick some salmon-colored beautiful and tasty cloudberries to increase our vitamin C level …!

First edible mushroom of the season discovered on the way to the tower measurement site (Photo: G. Schaepman-Strub, 9 July 2013).

Kytalyk, July 9, 2013

Back to work again, since yesterday we took the day off. Our first “free” day, although the concept of free was a bit weird: chop wood, carry wood, pump water, manage waste disposal, clean, tidy up… Luckily, past 16:30h it became a really free day, even dinner was special with reindeer meat balls with pasta and special bread. And at end of the day, we even watched a film!

The first week of field work passed by really fast. After selecting my 30 plots, I started to determine the species composition of my plots. The process was straightforward: placing a grid of 50 by 50 centimeters divided in 25 smaller quadrants and identifying the different species, while noting down presence and absence. While on the first day I only could see the little quadrants full of vegetation. However, after two days, each quadrant became like a little mini-forest with several strata, where I could see how the mosses tried to escape from the shade of Betula nana growing higher up, or how the composition of species changes when Peltigera aphtosa was occupying most of the ground. Awesome!

Grid used for determining species composition (Photo: M. Iturrate, July 2013).

Quadrant of the grid used for determining species composition (Photo: M. Iturrate, July 2013).

Some species were really easy to identify, such as the Cassiope tetragona, Arctostaphylos alpina or Betula nana, but for others I had many problems, so at the moment I only have the description of them. The good point is that today Dr. Olga Khitun, a Russian botanist, has arrived. She will teach me how to identify species unknown to me and how to sample relevés using the Braun-Blanquet approach to determine species associations around Kytalyk.

Maitane Iturrate and Olga Khitun ready to assess the floristic diversity in the Kytalyk area. Up to now our list contains about 60 different species – let’s see how many more we will find! We welcome any bets on this … (Photo: G. Schaepman-Strub, July 2013).

I’m looking forward to starting to work together with her although it will be very intense again. We were walking around the research site after her arrival in order to get a first impression of the vegetation composition. It is great to see her stopping every few steps to explain me which species are there or her taking species samples if she is not sure about them herself. I feel really privileged of getting her help and learn from her knowledge and experience she gained in other arctic places such as Yamal.

Kytalyk, July 5, 2013

Yesterday evening we sat together with Lena, the cook, ordering food and all other essentials such as toilet paper. For planning future food supply, she wanted to know when people will arrive and leave from the site. We wrote a small shopping list, now hanging at the wall behind the eating table, in sight for those longing to get off the site …

Overview of living facilities: Big house on the right, kitchen in the back of the image. (Photo: A. Erb, July 2012).

Living and working room in the big hut (Photo: A. Erb, July 2012).

One week has passed for the UZH group already, another two to go for me, another five for Maitane and Inge, it seems ages ago that we arrived to the field site… These passed days were rather intense for me – let alone for the two PhD students who are out here for the first time with all new impressions. Will be important to slow down a bit now and get into a daily working rhythm, passing some free time in the evening and weekends rather than coming late to lunch and solving problems that accumulated throughout the day after dinner. Up to now we only had a few free minutes before falling asleep at midnight.

One week: also a good time to review scientific progress: For both our projects the sites and plots are selected, the towers setup and running (yes, indeed THE day of first data records today!), plant species determined in one third of the diversity plots, work accomplished according to our schedules. All small problems solved, no big ones so far, neither work-wise nor socially. And tomorrow there will be a bania to relax and get us clean again!

Map from the Kytalyk area with location of the facilities indicated (Map: Google Earth).

Kytalyk, July 3, 2013

During this year’s first field campaign, my main objective of the field work is to characterize, in terms of biodiversity, the research area, including a floodplain, lowland tundra and a hillside. To reach this objective, measurement plots will be selected in these areas, the species composition is determined and important plant traits related to the radiation balance are measured in the tundra. These include leaf length, width and leaf optical properties, height and architecture of the different plants.

Mixed dry vegetation patch, including Betula nana, Vaccinium vitis idea, sedges, brown mosses (Photo: G. Schaepman-Strub, July 2010).

Simultaneously, soil measurements will be taken in order to analyze the correlation between abiotic traits (i.e. soil moisture, pH, Active Layer Thickness…) and the plant traits measured. In addition, other vegetation relevées will be selected and measured using the Braun-Blanquet approach. This approach will allow us to assess the phyto-sociology of the area (plant associations).

Preliminary species list of the Kytalyk area based on previous field campaigns. This year a botanist from St. Petersburg will join us to complete the local species list as a reference for expected future changes (Table: M. Iturrate, June 2013).

Most of the results obtained will be used for radiative transfer modeling. 3D objects for the DART model will be designed using results from the measured plant traits. The aim of the 3D object database is to create different scenarios of plant compositions and to study the behavior of the impact of short-wave radiation within them. The results obtained will be validated by removal experiments reproducing the scenarios created (but this will be another field campaign ).

URPP GCB Project 1: Cross-scale quantification of vegetation–atmosphere interactions and biodiversity change

Gabriela Schaepman-Strub, Pascal Niklaus, Maitane Iturrate, Inge Juszak, and NN (position currently open)

We investigate biodiversity-effects on vegetation-climate interactions. For this, we combine process-based modelling and statistics to link terrestrial biodiversity measures, in-situ proxy observations of energy and carbon fluxes, and corresponding satellite-inferred landscape-scale products (albedo, vegetation biochemistry, canopy structure, evapotranspiration). The 3D radiative transfer model DART will be used to explore how species diversity influences albedo, canopy light distribution, and ground level radiation throughout the growing season. The parametrization of DART requires the definition of a limited number of plant functional groups through selected traits that are representative of the functional and taxonomic diversity of tundra vegetation, but at the same time adapted to the intermediate complexity of DART. Running DART in the energy budget mode will allow investigating the small spatial scale relation of micro-climate with functional trait diversity. Finally, the model will be parametrized at the landscape level, integrating small-scale patches of differing diversity and size to study the contribution of micro-climatic feedbacks by communities to the landscape scale.

Predictions will be validated using field observations at the patch scale and satellite-inferred land surface products at landscape scale. Upscaling procedures for in-situ proxies will be developed. Given the complexity of processes, we will aim at simplifying the relation of modeled radiation fields with satellite observations and in-situ data at respective spatial and temporal scales.