Welcome to Kilpisjärvi

Yesterday, we traveled from Helsinki up to Kilpisjärvi to the research station where we'll be living and working for the rest of the trip. First, we fly from Helsinki to a very small airport in the town of Kittilä.

Helsinki to Kittilä by plane. Kittilä to Kilpisjärvi by bus.

Kittilä is a small town north of the Arctic Circle with a population of about 6,000 people. That is very different compared to Phoenix where we're from, which has a population of almost two million people! It's also very different from Phoenix because this is the entire airport in Kittilä:

Kittilä airport, as seen from the plane when we landed

 Here's what the low-Arctic of northern Finland looks like as we are about to land in Kittilä:

Of course, relative to where we are at the station, Kittilä is a bustling metropolis, because we are three hours away to the northwest. It was still pretty warm in Kittilä (like Helsinki), and it was a hot 3-hour bus ride up to the station. But here, it is much cooler, because the hot snap is over. Today, it's been about 7°C (that's 44°F). From Kittilä, we got in a minibus and drove about 3 hours northwest to Kilpisjärvi. In Finnish, "järvi" means "lake", so we are at a research station on Lake Kilpis. It is very close to the border with Norway and Sweden.

The wonderful cook at the station had a late dinner waiting for us when we arrived, and afterwards we had a lecture from our friend Leena, a local artist, about Sami art and insights from reindeer herding and their relationship with the environment. Her husband is a relative of the famous Sami artist Nils-Aslak Valkeapää. It was great for students to be able to see a bit from his perspective, now that they are in the place where he is from.

Today, we spent the morning finalizing students' research and art plans, then in the afternoon took our first excursion out into the local ecosystem. We hiked at Pikku Malla, a "strict nature reserve" (meaning, it is managed with the strictest of regulations). We saw a lot of reindeer while we were hiking, and even a bit of snow!

Xavier, Alex, Jose, me, Robin, and Elisabeth on the trail next to Siiläsjarvi

The Arizonan students ask "What is this white stuff?"

We had a nice time exploring the ecosystem with binoculars and field microscopes, but tomorrow it's back to the grindstone with getting students' research projects up and running!

A Day in Helsinki

Today we had our first whole day together in Helsinki. We did a LOT of walking downtown to take in the culture that urban Finland has to offer. We visited the natural history museum where the students had to think about the role of art in communicating scientific concepts. Unfortunately there were a ton of elementary school field trips there too, so we had to wade through small children in order to learn about the natural history of Finland.

After lunch, we went to Kiasma, the contemporary art museum to see a couple of exhibits in BioArt. My favorite of those was the work of Alma Heikkilä, who depicts the coexistence of life forms at a microscopic scale. Two of her pieces depicted the community of organisms in soil (so of course I’m biased, being a soil biogeochemist).

Jose and Alex get close up with the painting representing lichens and fungi interacting with minerals in the soil.

Robin checks out the insects in decaying wood . This piece is rich with small detail that you don’t notice until you’re as close as Robin is.

The whole group checks out a naturally-lit representation of pollutants and microorganisms in our lungs

It is unusually hot in Helsinki for our arrival. It’s been over 80 degrees Fahrenheit!! There’s not a lot of air conditioning here, because it’s not a common need. So we have been sweaty today, but we’ve seen a lot. We even had some down time to explore the city before our group dinner where we introduced the students to some delicious Finnish foods: mackerel tartare and beef tongue.

Tomorrow we head back to the airport in the morning and fly north to the Arctic Circle!

Arrival

We have arrived in Helsinki! I have been here since yesterday, and the students arrived just a few moments ago. We have one more student coming in tonight, and then our group will be complete. Today the students will be very tired, since they flew from Phoenix overnight into a time zone 10 hours ahead of what they're used to. Tomorrow, we explore Helsinki and visit some museums!

The students sent me a selfie from the airport. That was before the 10 hour flight!

Here we go!

I am on my way today to Finland! I get to spend the next 9 hours on a plane to arrive in Helsinki tomorrow morning.



The students leave tomorrow to arrive in Finland the day after me, ready to learn about the Arctic and do some BioArt! We will spend a couple days in Helsinki and then head up to the Arctic Circle. They already have ideas for their research projects that we will be refining over the next few days as we make our way to the research station. There will be some great science happening!

If all goes according to plan, my next post will be from Finland!

Return to the Arctic

Our next group of BioArt students are preparing for their field season in the Arctic! We have 10 students traveling with us again this year, half science majors and half art majors. They will be working together to conduct independent research in Arctic ecosystems and communicate their research through bio-art. We are looking forward to doing that again from Kilpisjärvi Biological Station in northern Finland, our home away from home!

Right now, we are still at Arizona State University getting ready for the trip. We've started by discussing the similarities between science and art, and thinking about the skills that are similar to both fields. We've been using our skills in observation, interpretation, analysis, and creativity to think about both science and art. We've been practicing those skills in the Sonoran Desert with a little bit of field work... which in May is hot enough to make us really appreciate the fact that we'll soon be in the Arctic!

 

We've also been in the classroom learning some basics of Arctic ecology, so that students can start to plan their research projects and how they will communicate them creatively through art. Even though we're in the Sonoran Desert in the early summer, we've pretended that we're already in the Arctic to learn go over some field safety that we'll use in Finland. We can now successfully use signal mirrors in case we get lost and treat our teammates for hypothermia!

Learning to use signal mirrors... and how to use our cell phones as signal mirrors.

Practicing hypothermia wraps so that we can save Jeremy!

We have another week of class here at ASU, and then we pack up and leave for Finland!

BioArt Exhibition

The goal of the course in Kilpisjärvi was for students to be trained in both independent scientific research, as well as the communication of that research through creative works of art. Science and art students combined their skills and backgrounds to create some amazing work! This week, the official exhibition of their work began. They created research posters explaining their experimental science, which were displayed next to their artistic creations reflecting that science.

Each of the 5 projects are displayed like this. The science poster is hung next to their artistic work, giving both a scientific and a more creative expression of each research project.

The five scientist+artist pairs each have a project on display. I told you a bit about the students' research projects in previous blog posts, while we were in Finland working on them. Now, I can share with you the completed results! Here are the five projects. You can open their research poster to read about the science, and the photo of their art project shows how they also communicated that science in a very engaging way.

Tiff and Guillermo created a clay tile mosaic of the soil microarthropods they studied along the elevational gradient of a mountain fell. The individual depictions of collembola and mites are connected in a mosaic that mimics the Sami flag, an emblem of the native people in Lapland. Read about the soil microarthropods of Saana in their research poster!

Kylie and Gina represented their 3 experimental treatments of natural lake water, increased temperature, and decreased pH on the phytoplankton in Lake Kilpisjarvi through a 3-segment enhanced image of Asterionella taken from their scientific sampling. Read about the impacts of temperature and pH on lake phytoplankton in their research poster!

Stephanie and Diego created paintings representing the current plant community and projected future communities in 2050 and 2100, to show how the abundance and composition of the plant community could change with future climate change. The dots represent individual plants, with each species having a different color. Some plants will become more abundant, and others will decrease, changing the overall composition. Read about the projected change in reindeer-supporting plants in their research poster!

Ezra and Manny created a 3-D installation that recreates the lichen, moss and algae communities growing on rocks in the Arctic. showing just how abundant life on rocks can become. A side-display identified the lichen and showed how they measured the communities on rocks using their grid system. Learn how lichen diversity on rocks changes with elevation in their research poster!

Christina, Andrew, and Brooke created two different creative projects (since they were a 3-person group). On top are collages representing the birds of Kilpisjärvi (titled "Nature", on the left) and the impact humans can have on these bird populations (titled "Encroachment of Man", on the right). They are framed by ribbon hand-woven by Christina using local wool and traditional Sami weaving patterns.The TV is running a short film using footage and sound clips of the birds around Kilpisjärvi, to a reading of the Kalevala (a Finnish folklore poem). Read about the resilience of Kilspisjärvi birds to human disturbance in their research poster!

The exhibit opened this week, with a reception Wednesday night. The student scientists and artists discussed their work with students, faculty, and the public, relieved now that their hard work paid off!

Brooke discusses their bird research with visitors.

Kylie discusses phytoplankton (and photoshop) with visitors. (The two people on the right are her grandparents!)

Their works are on display on the 3rd floor of the Fletcher Library at ASU's West Campus through October 3, 2018. It's free and open to the public!

All of these works are under copyright protection and may not be recreated or redistributed without permission of the artists.

From Kilpisjärvi to Tromsø

While we were at Kilpisjärvi, we got to enjoy a bit of the local culture and cuisine. The kitchen staff made us a huge batch of pancake batter, that you traditionally make over a fire. We did it in the replica Sami goahti hut that is at the station. Put a little cloudberry jam on it, and mm mm mm!

Brooke and Tiff got good at flipping the pancakes, and even took requests for pancake shape.

Also, on our last night at the station, the cook made us a delicious dinner of local fish. It's hard to find a store here that sells fresh fish, because most people just go catch the fish themselves. (So who would buy it, when it's so easy to get it yourself?) The cook asked her friend to go fishing for us. So our last dinner at Kilpisjärvi was white fish straight out of Kilpisjärvi!

It was a great stay at the research station. Students have done a very good job on their BioArt research and communication projects. And not only that, but throughout the week, we got to learn a lot from local scientists and artists who work in the BioArts. They helped demonstrate just how successfully the sciences and arts can be intertwined. For example, Leena Valkeapää showed us a project at the Pikku-Malla nature reserve where she (an artist) and a scientist are testing the use of two native plant species to re-vegetate damaged soil. The design of the experiment tests whether the two species successfully revegetate the soil, and also whether the geographic origin of the individual plants matters for its success. Leena, the artist, worked with the scientist to design a layout that is both scientific to test the hypotheses, but also visually aesthetic (...once the plants start growing! They are still very small right now.)

Leena shows the students the marking system for the pattern of crowberry and ligonberry plants used in the revegetation experiment.

We left Kilpisjärvi yesterday morning and drove to Tromsø, Norway which is the point of departure for the program. We took the same bus that brought us to the station at the beginning of the program. You can compare this photo to the one from that early trip. The students who are awake are still smiling, but there are a few more sleeping students on this trip. We wore them out!

While we are here in Tromsø, though, we might as well keep learning and experiencing science and art! One of the places we went to is Polaria, an aquarium to learn a bit about marine science, which is not something we got to see up in the mountains. When it was getting close to the time to leave, I didn't see any of our students walking around anymore, so I had to search a bit for them. Of COURSE I found a cluster of them in a corner peppering the seal handler with questions:

We had a good day in Tromsø (though a bit wet and cold... it's been rainy), and ended with a group dinner at a restaurant on the fjord. Now, the students are all on their airplanes headed home. They still have work to do to wrap up their projects, which will be exhibited at the gallery on campus in September. Stay tuned for updates on that!