Phytoplankton bonanza!

One of our student teams, Kylie and Gina, have been studying the phytoplankton that live in the lake next to the station. ("Järvi" means "lake", so Kilpisjärvi is the name of the lake as well as the town.)  They want to know how abundant plankton are in the lake, and how they will respond to warmer temperatures. It is generally known that many types of phytoplankton reproduce more when water is warmer, but this is mostly studied in nutritious waters in warmer regions. Nobody has looked at how plankton will respond in this particular lake. Actually, Gina and Kylie couldn't find any information about plankton in this lake at all!

Some of the phytoplankton that Kylie has photographed. You can see several different types.

To conduct their experiment, they took water samples from the lake in jars.

Gina collecting one of the jars of lake water.

They calculated the abundance of phytoplankton in the bottles from a small subsample, then put the bottles into little greenhouses that they built on the shore of the lake. They built three greenhouses. One was covered and not vented at all, to make the temperature around the bottles a few degrees warmer than it currently is. Another greenhouse had some holes poked in the sides to cool off a bit, and create temperature is only a little bit warmer than it currently is.  The other one was very highly vented, to essentially be the same temperature as the current outside air. (They didn't want to just leave those bottles uncovered, because it's possible that the greenhouse itself interrupts light coming in for photosynthesis. So, it is receiving the same amount of sunlight as the other green houses, but not staying warmer.) They have thermometers in each greenhouse measuring the air temperature.

After a couple days in the greenhouses, Kylie and Gina are busy counting their phytoplankton from each one. If their hypothesis is supported, they will count more plankton in the jars that were sitting in the warmer greenhouse. This takes quite a lot of work, because neither Gina nor Kylie were plankton experts when they got here. They have learned how to recognize the different types of plankton and how to use the big inverted microscope.

Kylie and Gina will be communicating their project through photography. They will be creating what is called a "composite image". The main focus of the image will be a photograph of the phytoplankton they collected, but the background will have other images layered in that represent the environment the phytoplankton were living in. If that doesn't quite make sense, don't worry. I had a hard time picturing it from the description, too, until Kylie showed me an example. It looks cool! That means that they are doing a lot of computer editing of images, along with their microscope work.

Temperature was their initial variable that they studied. Now, they have also acidified the water, to simulate potential impacts of CO2 dissolving in water (which dissolves into carbonic acid and acidifies water) and other forms of pollution. They will again count their plankton at those temperatures to see if they are impacted by both temperature and acidification. They will be microscope pros by the end of the course!

Birds galore

Today I helped one of the student teams with their research project. Andrew, Brooke, and Christina (the ABC, as we call them), are looking at how bird behavior might be impacted by human activity in Kilpisjärvi.

Kilpisjärvi is actually a fairly new town, only about 10 years old. We also have a fairly main road running by the station, the E8 that goes into Norway. Of course, the traffic on a "main road" in Lapland is very different from a "main road" in Phoenix! But many cars and trucks, and their associated noise, are a factor here. Brooke, Christina, and Andrew wonder how that impacts the birds who live in the otherwise undisturbed habitat here around the research station.

For the past several days, they are counting birds at regular intervals from the E8 road to see whether birds avoid being near the road. They also then create disturbances at each of those regular distance intervals to see if the birds near the road deal with disturbance better than birds further from the road.

To count the birds, all three of them spread out along the road, then walk to their first 50-meter stopping point. I was one of the three counters today. We sat still at our marked spot to let the birds forget we're there, then created a disturbance using the horn sound on our phones. We then counted how long it took for birds to come back, and how many of them we saw of different species. Then, we moved to the next spot and repeated the process.

Because the three counters are spread out, they are able to count the birds over a fairly large area. I was on the end, at transect "C". Here, you can just barely see Brooke on transect "B", beyond the end of my finger. And you will maybe notice the blue flagging, marking my spot to stop and count.

I enjoyed helping, because it meant I could sit quietly and observe. I saw a bluethroat, pied flycatchers, and house sparrows. I also happened to see a vole and some bees!

Christina, Andrew, and Brooke are also working on collages that will communicate what they learn about how birds react to the human disturbances. They have been collecting natural materials that they will use and making castings of bird sculptures. Andrew will be making his collage in video format, which is his favorite format. You can find him around the station in the evenings getting his recordings. Near the bird feeder is a great place to record the redpolls and bramblings!

So, students today have continued to work a bit on their projects, even though technically they had the day off from classes. (They just work THAT hard!) We did plan one activity for them today, which was to go to the "3-Country Cairn". It's the point that marks the corner where Finland, Norway, and Sweden meet. It represents how the borders have fluctuated  over history when Finland was ruled by the Russians, the Swedes, and fought for their independence. At the end of WWII, they celebrated the departure of the Nazis by raising a flag over this cairn. Since we've learned a bit about WWII history as we walked along or by remnants during our field work, it was interesting to visit this historic location built in 1926 (to replace the one built in 1897 that eroded). So, we're learning a little history, along with our BioArt!

Guillermo, Christina, Manny, Diego, and Gina waaay over in Sweden, taken from waaaay over here in Finland!

Soil microarthropods of Kilpisjärvi

Now I will start telling you a bit about the research projects being conducted by our students.

The first science+art team I'll talk about are Tiffany and Guillermo. They are investigating the soil microarthropod communities of Saana, the fell that we climbed early in our visit. They are interested in what communities live in and beneath moss as you increase in elevation up Saana. If you have read my past blog posts, you will now all about soil microarthropods! If you are new to the blog, you can brush up with this post, this post, or this post. (Of course, those posts are about the communities of the other polar region: Antarctica. But the same concepts apply to the Arctic!)

Yesterday, Guillermo and Tiff hiked up Saana, taking soil samples from low, middle, and high elevation. To extract the microarthropods, they crafted a portable version of the Tullgren funnels that I have used in Antarctica for my research. These extractors use heat (created by lightbulbs) to convince the microarthropods to leave the soil and drop into a funnel into our sample container.

Tiff and Guillermo put samples on their home-made Tullgren funnels

Tiff and Guillermo put their samples on the funnels yesterday, and they will gradually turn up the dimmer switch on the lights over the next few days, then use microscopes to look at the microarthropods they collect on Monday.

They will also measure the pH, salinity, and temperature of the soil, to understand how the microarthropods' soil habitat changes with elevation. This will be pretty interesting, because nobody has looked at the soil organisms around this research station before!

What kind of critters will they find? Here is a video Guillermo made from a test sample we extracted overnight. You see a variety of different species of soil mites and springtails:

They have also come up with a very creative way of communicating this research project. They have made their own clay, which they are using to sculpt microarthropods. They will show how interesting these organisms are, using material from the organisms' habitat!

Tiff photo-documented the process to make their clay.

So, Guillermo and Tiff are making great progress on both their science and communication. Stay tuned to future posts to learn what the other students are doing!

Birds and radio waves

Today we had a warmer, sunny day... for a little while at least! Students have continued working on their research projects, but we also had two small activities during the day for students to learn about research happening around the station.

We were lucky enough to go again with Antero, this time to visit his "bird boxes". There are about 200 of these bird houses in this valley, used by several of the species native to the area. For many years, Antero has recorded the number and size of eggs and chicks born in these bird boxes, to track the health of the bird populations in this area.

Can you guess what Antero has in his hand that the students are so eagerly gathered around and photographing?

It's newborn chicks of the species of bird called the "great tit"!

We also visited KAIRA, which stands for Kilpisjarvi Atmospheric Imaging Receiver Array. It is an array of radio receivers that detect low and high frequency radio waves from space. That allows them to measure things like meteors, space trash, planets and stars "twinkling", and the aurora borealis. KAIRA is just down the road from us, so their scientists often stay here when they're working on the array. Derek gave us a tour. On the left of the photo are the low-frequency antennae on poles, and the structures in the center house the high-frequency antennae, held above the ground by the wooden structures.

Interestingly, the wooden structures were made out of the pallets used to ship the equipment. The entire project was designed to create very little waste and reuse even the shipping materials.

We even got to crawl under the high-frequency receivers, which are raised off the ground to increase the ability of the wind to blow snow off of the antennae, which are placed in foam beneath the black plastic. It was nice, because it got us out of the cold wind that came back this afternoon! The shorter of our students could juuuust stand up under them, but the taller students had a harder time:

Reindeer traffic jam

Students have been busily working today on their independent research projects. They are working in teams of 2: one art major and one science major. The teams are designing their own research project about some aspect of this Arctic ecosystem. The topics of their projects range all over different topics: How different species of birds respond to human disturbance, how substrate availability impact lichen communities over elevation, how the lake plankton respond to warmer temperatures, how plants important to the herbivores in this ecosystem will change with future permafrost melt, and soil invertebrate communities living on Saana. They are also at the same time working on how they will communicate this science to the public. They are working with clay they collect from the soil, collages of natural materials, recording bird songs, among other things. We'll keep you posted on their progress.

Kylie and Gina are excited about starting their independent research! They are investigating the lake plankton.

On another note, we had a bit of a traffic jam on the way home from the market the other day:

Field trip with Antero

Today we got to go on a hike with Antero, who is the director of the research station. He has been working here for over 45 years, since he was a graduate student working on his PhD, so we learned a lot of information from him!

Kilpisjärvi is in the northwestern "arm" of Finland, sandwiched between Norway and Sweden. Borders with both countries are very close. To get to the hike, we had to cross into Norway. We stopped for a photo op at the border stone:

From the left: Tiff, Brooke, Manny, Christina, Antero (our host), Ezra, and Diego are in Norway. Gina, Guillermo, Andrew, Becky, Stephanie, and Richard are in Finland.

As you can see, we had genuine Arctic weather today! It was snowing and below freezing when we set out. But we are tough! We were mostly walking along an old road that was built during WWII. Finland at that time was aligned with Germany, allowing German occupation of Lapland to fight the USSR (which Finland had to do to maintain its independence). The road was built through the German army with labor of Russian prisoners of war.

The fence on the left side of the photo is a reindeer fence. Sami reindeer herders used to be able to move around the entire region, but now there is a fence dividing the Finnish and Norwegian reindeer herds. While walking on the road, we would frequently stop to hear information shared by Antero about the plants, animals, and people of this area.

It was a nice hike for exploration, but tomorrow we get down to business! Over the first couple of days here, students have had a chance to see the region while finalizing the plans for their independent research projects. Tomorrow, they start their own research!

A couple of days of exploration

This is our second full day at Kilpisjärvi Biological Station. Here we are, excited to be in the Arctic at the main building of the research station!

Over the past couple of days, we've taken a couple of field trips to local ecosystems. Yesterday, we visited the Pikku-Malla strict nature reserve (which is a highly protected type of reserve in Finland).

Pikku-Malla strict nature reserve

We had a very leisurely walk, stopping quite frequently because the theme of the walk was "observation". And there was quite a lot to observe! There were a lot of midges swarming. One landed on Tiff's coat, so Stephanie got a closer look using a miniature field microscope:

The rocks also host quite a lot of diversity. There are also a lot of very interesting lichens of all shapes and colors to capture our attention. We see shades of green, but also yellow, orange, and black.

Today we climbed Saana, which is a mountain fell in the Scandinavian Mountains. We observed the change in plant communities as you increase in elevation. At the bottom, there are stands of short silver birch:

Then, we were above the tree line, looking down at the lake, Kilpisjärvi. There are no more birch at this elevation, only plants that live close to the ground, like moss and crowberry, with the occasional willow shrub.

By the time we got to the top, at about 1,000 meters in elevation, we had true Arctic weather! It was chilly, windy, and snowing! Lichen and grass (and crazy ASU students) are the only ones who flourish at this elevation. The lichen were great to observe again, since the theme for today's lecture and hike was "color", and they come in so many fabulous colors.

Ezra, Stephanie, and Diego... so bundled up that you can hardly recognize them!

Because the weather was turning bad, we returned to the station. On the way down, these Sonoran Desert dweller ASU students got to play in some snow. (And how DARE they take aim at their professor?!?!)

Manny, Guillermo, Brooke, Gina, and Diego throwing snowballs

The hike wore everyone out, so they have the evening off. Tomorrow morning we continue with our coursework and field work.