(Contributed by CBAWO student Maddie Harasyn- Queen's University)
Science in the Arctic has turned
out to be really fun! I have been here for just over two weeks and I’m actually
starting to get used to the Cape Bounty routine. It usually begins with waking
up at 7:30 AM to the bright light shining through the fluorescent walls of the
tents we all sleep in. Then the whole crew migrates down to the Weatherhaven
(what we call our mess tent) for coffee and a breakfast of either oatmeal or
pancakes. We typically add excessive amounts of toppings to our breakfast to
change it up a little – peanut butter, Nutella, raisins or on special mornings
M&M’s. Over breakfast, we talk about all of our schedules for the day.
My schedule involves walking down
to the river beside our campsite at 9 AM and collecting water samples. I then
filter the water samples to measure the amount of suspended sediment, dissolved
oxygen and ions in the water which involves three separate filtering processes.
Often other researchers in camp offer to help me filter, as we all help out
each other when we can! I then hike out to the three smaller sub-catchments
that feed the river which I just sampled and collect the same water samples at
each, which is about an hour and a half hike. We always go out in pairs for
safety, so the hike is filled with good conversation and lots of laughs. We
often find cool things on our hikes as well, like interesting rocks or full
skeletons of Muskox.
Then back to filtering in our lab
tent, which occupies time until lunch rolls around. For lunch, we often make
soup, Kraft Dinner or eat copious amounts of peanut butter and jam on Ryvita
crackers. My afternoon often consists of helping others with their research
projects – like installing sensors, or hiking up to one of the sub-catchments
to collect data from the loggers recording data across the landscape. It is
very interesting to learn what other students are studying up here, and how
their projects are coming along. Everyone has very interesting and very diverse
topics, which makes every day different and exciting. To end off the day, I
complete my final rounds of water sample collections at all of the sites, and
filter everything before dinner. Some dinner favorites are spaghetti, burritos
or chili. Over dinner, we chat about what we accomplished during the day and
neat things that we all found out on the tundra. Then we head back off to bed,
in the same brightness which we woke up to.
Hiking to East Lake to collect water samples.
My personal project is looking at the water chemistry in the East and West Lake to the south of our campsite. A previous researcher discovered that small depressions exist in the bottom of the lakes, which could hint that groundwater is seeping into the lakes via these sites. My project is focused on determining the source of these depressions, which I will do by studying the water chemistry in each depression. This is done by drilling holes in the lake ice, and lowering a device down the water column slowly that measures depth, electrical conductivity, temperature, dissolved oxygen and turbidity. Water chemistry samples are also collected at the bottom of each site, to be analyzed for ions and isotopes back in the lab. After lowering this device at all 22 sites, the data can be viewed on one of the lab computers and studied to help hypothesize what may be occurring at the bottom of the lake at these sites.
So far, I have found that the
East Lake has mostly uniform conductivity throughout the water columns at all
of the sites, whereas some specific sites in the West Lake show an increase in
conductivity and decrease in dissolved oxygen with depth in the lower water
column. This could suggest that groundwater is entering the lakes through these
depressions, as groundwater would have a higher concentration of dissolved ions
which increase the conductivity of the water at these sites. The water
chemistry analyses and historic records of the disturbance patterns in this
area will help consolidate this hypothesis, which will be completed as part of
my thesis back at Queen’s throughout the final year of my undergraduate program.
Both lakes we are studying can be
seen above: East to the left and West to the right.
