I spent two summers researching climate change in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, Alaska, the traditional and current home to the Yup’ik and Cup’ik peoples.
The research site was 50 miles away from the nearest town, so we chartered several float planes to transport us and our gear to the peninsula where we situated our camp. We stayed there for months at a time, meaning we brought all of our food and scientific equipment on day 1.
Me and a friend in the back of the float plane. We're dressed for colder temperatures: most days were around 50 - 60 degrees Fahrenheit, not including rain and windchill. Photo credit: Christina Minions
The edge of the peninsula. The lake in the background was deemed "Landing Lake," for it was the only water body in the area large enough for the float planes to land safely. I lived out of that tent for months!
Camp at its busiest. The green tent in the foreground was our lab tent, where we processed water samples and prepped experiments. The "T" shapes in front of the lab are used to measure how deep the permafrost has thawed. The white tent in the foreground was the common tent, where the team cooked meals and played games in the evenings. In front of the common tent was the solar panel and our water storage. Landing Lake was not potable on its own, so we manually pumped our water using the apparatus to the right of the blue jugs. We tried to only walk on the wooden and plastic boards to avoid degrading the environment too much. The tents in the background belonged to a group of students who joined us in the field for a couple of weeks.
Inside the common tent. Photo credit: Christina Minions
I grabbed this shot of camp just before the sun dipped below a cloud bank. This photo was taken around 10:00 pm at night. There was no darkness during June and July. Bad for sleep, very good for science.
This is cottongrass. Fields of them dot the landscape during the summer.
This plant is called Labrador Tea. The leaves give off a citrusy scent in the summer months, like lemons with a hint of pine. Falling asleep in this perfume was a welcome change from the sweat and grime of the days.
I wore a few scientific hats while in the YKD, but my favorite projects were the plant surveys. Plants can alter when they begin certain life stages (growing new leaves, reproductive cycles, etc). This is called phenology. As climate change alters the temperatures and rain patterns in the YKD, plants may react differently than they have in past decades. Among other things, understanding these changes can help us determine how much we can expect plants to photosynthesize and act as a sink for carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas.
Helicopter sampling projects were a close second favorite.
Living in the YKD came with its own set of challenges. No connection to the outside world, no running water, countless mosquitoes, and worst of all . . . no showering.
I have never been surrounded by nature so closely. Left to right: an Arctic tern looks down for his next meal, a beaver chews on wetland plants at the edge of the peninsula, and a moose looks at our camp from Landing Lake at dawn.
Winds and gray skies often lasted all day. These silhouettes and shadowy landscapes capture the essence of the YKD.
When the sun did shine, the landscape transformed into a sea of vibrant greens and yellows, colors made all the more beautiful by their scarcity. I saw rainbows frequently here, but this is one of the best. If you look closely, you'll see that there's a faint second arch above the first.
The tundra was so soggy that walking across Landing Lake was an easier way to make it to some of our field sites. We would bring a boat full of supplies to help lighten the load and keep our balance as we walked. Photo credit: Christina Minions
There are two flux towers nearby our camp that continuously measure environmental variables, including temperature, wind speed and direction, and carbon dioxide and methane levels. One tower can record data over an area about the size of a football field.
Flux towers play an integral role in understanding how the Arctic responds to climate change. Current climate change models don't adequately include greenhouse gas emissions from the Arctic, and these towers are helping to close that data gap.
They are delicate instruments and often require our attention. Here, a few coworkers are cleaning the methane gas analyzer, which looks like a small white water tower.
We installed several of these plastic collars into the ground near camp. The top layer of tundra was soft enough to cut through with a bread knife, which was how we pushed these into the ground. The collars are one portion of a terrestrial gas flux experiment. Once installed, we attached a clear fitted chamber (see image to the right) atop the collars to measure how much carbon dioxide was being emitted or absorbed by the plants inside of the collar. We pushed the collars into the ground to ensure that there was an airtight seal during our measurements and no ambient air entered unintentionally.
The orange box is a LI-COR 840, which measures carbon dioxide concentrations. The translucent tubing that connects the chamber to the LI-COR creates a closed system where the LI-COR can push and pull air from inside the chamber to sample continuously. We hook the LI-COR up to the computer to track the measurements. The fabric atop the chamber can be fitted around it to block out light, which prevents photosynthesis. We can get a good idea of how productive different plant species are by looking at how quickly they absorb carbon dioxide without the fabric versus how quickly they release carbon dioxide (in a process called respiration) when the fabric blocks photosynthesis. We are standing in a particularly treacherous fen that loves to trick poor scientists into overtopping their boots and ending up with wet feet. Moments before this photo was taken, I became the latest victim and was reckoning with the reality that I had hours of squishy walking to do before we could go back to camp. Photo credit: Cameron Gaspord
I'll wrap things up with a couple of sunsets. I would occasionally go out on the water in the evenings to escape the mosquitoes and enjoy the sunsets. I think this image does a good job of capturing the texture and vastness of the sky in the YKD.
Another nice sunset, this one taken in mid-September on one of my last days in the Delta. By this time, the temperatures had begun to drop and we experienced real darkness for a few hours each night. We couldn't stay for much longer because the float planes couldn't land safety when ice was present on Landing Lake.
