Autumn is a time when we are hard at work analysing the data from the past field season. We also have to start to plan for the next season with many applications for funding due in November and permits to renew. Plans for 2014 are coming along nicely and we expect to be at CBAWO for almost three months.
A big part of operating a long term research program is to carry out basic, systematic measurements that are needed for all kinds of work. These include weather, river, soil and lake measurements and they are the cornerstone of our efforts at CBAWO. In this region of the Arctic, there are no systematic river or lake measurements taken by government agencies, and the nearest weather station is 300 km away at Mould Bay, so we really need to have good quality data for our research.
This map shows the current primary measurement network. There are a number of weather, river and lake stations that have been in operation from the beginning in 2003, and some like the small streams and soil stations that have been added since that time. There are many other locations not shown here that are sampled regularly but this network is the core of CBAWO.
In the last two years, we have added time lapse cameras to this basic network. We have two located on a plateau edge to provide images of the ice cover on each lake. This is very important for us as we are not usually there when the ice forms in autumn, and in some years (like 2013), the ice comes off the lakes after we leave as well. The cameras perform well but can be buried by snow, so we miss much of the winter.
We installed a time lapse camera on the West River station in 2013 as well, looking down stream at the river and lake. The goal of this is to provide some visual indication of what happens at the river in our absence.
