July 4, 2008 Towers on the Tundra

Polar Date July 4, 2008

Independence Day at Toolik Lake began as a normal workday with people up and in the labs or fields or lakes on schedule, which means, early.  The weather stayed bright and sunny all day and night with fluffy white clouds providing contrast for the bright blue of the sky.  Donie wanted to take me out to the "towers” by Imnaviat creek to have a look at the equipment used by Dr. Laura Gough for measuring air, snow and solar radiation.

Much research has been done on this watershed, including snow pack, dissolved carbon and thaw depth.

  Dr. Gough will be arriving at Toolik on July 14th with Carol her grad student and Donna her undergrad student.  Dr. John Moore will be arriving on July 21st with another teacher.  I can’t wait to meet and work with all of them!

The equipment is part of the AON (Arctic Observation Network) Project.  This is an observation project to help scientists understand the way carbon from land affects water. Donie and I took a truck north for 20 minutes or so, drove up a pipeline access road, parked and walked a bit to some very nicely constructed boardwalk. When we ran out of boardwalk, our Xtra-Tuff boots hit the wet sedge tundra and we slogged across to the tower in the valley, known as the fen tower. There are two different towers, the power tower and the instrument tower.  The power tower is not in any way like the Power-Tower at Cedar Point Amusement Park!

This view shows the 5 solar panel array facing due South.

This power tower provides electrical power for the instrument tower through the use of 5 solar panels, a wind turbine and 32 car batteries that store energy for the long, sunless winter.

The instrument tower consists of a sonic anemometer, a sonic snow measurer, an albedometer to measure the reflection of the surface and absorption of the sun’s energy, a net radiometer and photoreaction sensors to tell how much photosynthesis the plants are undergoing.  There is also a rain-tipping bucket without a shield a little way away from the instrument tower.  A thick, black cable connects the power and instrument towers.

the upper left arm-like tongs measure wind in three directions. There is an infrared gas monitor, a sonic snow measurere, an albedometer, and a net radiometer and photoreaction sensors. Ground heat flux is measured and the transpiration stream from the plants.It's all very complicated!

After visiting the valley tower system, we hiked to the top of the ridge, passing the slope tower system sitting on tussock tundra that has everything the fen system has for instruments, but does not have quite the amount of power as the ridge and fen power towers.

The ridge power tower is almost exactly like the fen power tower with one exception.  Can you spot the difference between the two?

This one looks a lot like the fen tower, with one major difference. Can you spot it?

Signing off from Toolik Lake, and remember, "*There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew”. ~Marshall McLuhan, 1964s *