(Photo: Carolina Voigt) Lake wall measurementSaturday 26th July 2014

The first week in tundra is now over. The days have been long and filled with work, but the work atmosphere has been great and we have managed to accomplish a lot.

 

I have spent my days mainly on the thermokarst lakes measuring gases from lake walls for my MSc thesis. The gas emissions from the unvegetated lake walls have not been studied so far, but we expect them to act similarly to peat circles which have high N2O production.

 

These possibly high N2O fluxes from lake walls might change the current estimations of the gas emissions in a landscape scale. The lake walls might also help us to understand better how the peat circles work, since the walls provide us information of not only the top layer but also the deeper and older layers of the soil. All in all, at the moment only little is known about these lake walls, but hopefully more after this expedition!

(Photo: Carolina Voigt) Mosquito attackThe lake walls have turned out to be quite challenging to measure, since they are very dynamic and peat layers are breaking off easily from the walls. However, none of us have fallen down to lakes while climbing the cracking walls (yet) and no big peat layers have fallen on us (yet), so we have been lucky so far. Moreover, mosquitoes seem to love these nice windless locations next to the lakes and even our "mosquito-proof" Russian army outfits are not enough to stop them... So every evening we gather to our small green cabin a little dirtier and a little scratchier from peat dust and mosquito bites.

In spite of difficult conditions, the measurements have been successful and our do-it-yourself soup can gas chambers have been working really well. It is amazing how simple things you actually need for doing research! With simple equipment it is also easy to notice when something goes wrong and repair it. Ode to soup cans! Thanks to our hard-working team we were able to finish the gas measurements for all three study lakes on time before the storm started.

Last two days we have had a relaxing weekend in Seida cleaning our eyes, ears and noses from the peat dust in sauna and charging our batteries both literally and metaphorically for a new week in the field. Now the weather seems to be getting better and it is time for us to hike back to tundra. I hope the following week will be as productive as this one!

Magdaleena