From the Arctic: Belugas to Bugs

Wow, morning comes very fast, especially when the sun is bright and shining at 4:30 a.m. I have now created a comforter fort around my bottom bunk, reminding me of my childhood days. Hopefully this will stave off the sunrise for an hour or two at least.

We are headed into a tree island today and were warned that it would be buggy and wet. How is that any different? But, getting the warning made us all apprehensive and nervous. It turned out that it did not seem as bad as the day in the forest. Can I just be getting used to them?

A tree island is a cluster of trees separated from the tree line in the tundra. The successful trees often produce many little raments, or clones, to increase tree density at a site. Our plots did not yield any difficult trees. And we had a temporary group member from the Churchill Northern Studies Center volunteer staff helping us, increasing our efficiency, so much so that we returned early for lunch. Visions of a nap danced before my eyes but updating and recording filled the time instead. We all sit as a group; we have a blast as we type and talk.

We returned to the field and began logging our seedlings/saplings again. We worked in a site that gradually shifted from the tundra to ecotone (a transition area) and then to the forest itself. The tundra yielded a few seedlings though not many, but the transition area was so full of seedlings that we never made it to the forest. It awaits us tomorrow; the trees are going nowhere tonight.

This did allow a bit of an early return and provided me a chance to run. The day was warm—another perfect Arctic summer day. So I redesigned my running outfit, pulling out my running shorts and technical shirt, and then putting on a bug jacket and bug pants. Tundra animals throughout the Arctic are no doubt laughing at the strange looking man they spotted racing by today.

After dinner the group brainstormed lesson plan applications of our work here. This was some of our most exciting work so far. Ideas bounced off the walls as they moved, were morphed, and eventually tossed as a new idea bloomed. Joint planning is a wonderful and magic thing.

And guess what... no polar bear today. But we did see a fight between several Bonaparte's Gulls and a tree squirrel. Two birds became very agitated and then more joined in, screaming, diving and hovering. We investigated and discovered the tree squirrel invading a nest. The birds tried to scare off the squirrel but to no avail, screaming in vain as their nest was emptied.

James Locke is traveling as part of an Earthwatch Institute expedition to study climate change at the Arctic's edge. The above is part of a series of dispatches he is filing for Manhattan Beach Patch during his trip.