So today was our last day in Churchill. We finished up by collecting 2 cores in a forested area, where we finally found Sphagnum moss! This entire trip we have found zero Sphagnum in all of our study sites. Sphagnum is important because large amounts of testate amoebae tend to live in it and Sphagnum is unique because it creates its own acidic conditions in which it tends to live well in! This is its way of out competing other plants so that it can survive.
After happily leaving the forest site (trees=lots of bugs), I was able to finally get my GPR transect! I was able to get a 150m long transect of a peatland as long as several cross transects where we had taken the cores. The radar reading looked pretty on the screen, so hopefully the data comes out in the analytical stage of this work.
All in all the trip thoroughly improved by the end of the week. It was at least gratifying to get our feet wet in the research (gotta love bog puns) and to have our equipment finally working in order to take home some data and samples! Also - if anyone out there is planning to do some subarctic research or volunteering I would highly recommend the Churchill research center - did I mention the food there is amazing?
...pictures to come
After happily leaving the forest site (trees=lots of bugs), I was able to finally get my GPR transect! I was able to get a 150m long transect of a peatland as long as several cross transects where we had taken the cores. The radar reading looked pretty on the screen, so hopefully the data comes out in the analytical stage of this work.
All in all the trip thoroughly improved by the end of the week. It was at least gratifying to get our feet wet in the research (gotta love bog puns) and to have our equipment finally working in order to take home some data and samples! Also - if anyone out there is planning to do some subarctic research or volunteering I would highly recommend the Churchill research center - did I mention the food there is amazing?
...pictures to come
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