The first few days at Toolik~

I would like start with a little background on the origin of the trip to Alaska.  For my graduate research, I am interested in brominated flame retardants.  These compounds are included as components of many common household goods including fabrics, foam, and electronic components.  These compounds are very important in preventing and slowing the spread of fires.  However, as with any compounds we use on a daily basis - their entry into the environment is inevitable.  The most toxic forms of brominated flame retardants have recently been banned, yet some remain in use.  My question is: what happens to these compounds when they enter the environment (eg. what is their environmental fate).

So, your likely question right now is: "Then why go to the arctic?"  It turns out that brominated flame retardants are ubiquitous in the environment and are even transported to the poles in the air.  Therefore, I headed to the arctic to see how these compounds break down once they enter the aqueous environment.  Since this field season is pretty short (we will be at Toolik for 11 days), our focus is to collect water and preserve it for experiments back at OSU.  I am interested in the dissolved organic matter in the water.  When dissolved organic matter is exposed to light, it releases molecules that can interact with other compounds to break them down into smaller components.  This may be benificial in many cases.  However, with brominated flame retardants, the degraded form of the compound (ie. the daughter products) may be more toxic than the initial compound!  In this study I hope to identify these daughter products as well as determine how they form.  Over the course of the next 11 day, Allison and I will be collecting and filtering over 200 L of water.  We will ship 160 L of the filtered water back to OSU for processing, while dissolved organic matter will be extracted from the remaining water.

Okay, I know you are probably thinking: "enough already, get to the pictures!"  So here is the story for the past few days.

My labmate, Allison, and I arrived in Fairbanks at 1am on Monday morning.  We hopped a taxi to University of Alaska, Fairbanks and dragged ourselves up to the dorm for the night.  We had one day overlap in Fairbanks, during which we picked up some last minute supplies and took a several showers (to make sure we are squeaky clean before our venture up to the North Slope).  On Wednesday we woke up at 5am to a gorgeous and bright morning.  At this point Fairbanks does have darkness for part of the night, but I can attest to the fact that the sunrise definitely occurs well before 5am :-).

While on the Dalton, we passed over the Arctic Circle and (of course) had to stop to take a photo!

We had gorgeous weather when we first arrived.  Since it is late season, the evening turns dusky and the Brooks Range appears pink in the light.

The Brooks Range cast in a rosy glow :-)

Tent city as seen from the far side of Toolik Lake.  Allison and my tent are the two to the furthest right in the photo

We have hopped right in with filtering and collected 100L of water from Toolik Lake our first morning at camp.  Now to get it all filtered...

The filtration set-up with our trusty little parastaltic pump!
We pass the water through a coarse pre-filter and a 0.45um
filter.

A close-up of our work horse pump and the pre-filter for the water.

Where did the time go???

It has been quite a while since I posted anything ... my apologies! As we near our departure date from Toolik on the 22nd, things have gotten really busy. I am going to try to write a few posts just to catch you all up a bit on the Toolik happenings! So last I wrote, I mentioned the first big snow.... It was so cool to see the Brooks Range completely blanketed by snow.

I also had quite a few nice icicles hanging off of my tent in the morning!

Aleah posing with our frozen mop! Makes mopping the floor slightly more difficult ...

We had to go out to sample the East Lakes as well as pull in some of the science gear that was deployed out in the lake the first snowy day. We add nutrients (phosphorus and ammonium) to the E-lakes in low quantities to study the effects of nutrification of these waters. In the center of both of the two lakes is a solar powered nutrient "dripper" that adds the nutrients at a steady rate. So in addition to sampling, our goal was to pull in these fairly large floats that housed the two drippers. Although chilly, we had fun with the snow.

Shilo standing next to the mini snowman in our boat we made before heading out on the water.

After we got the second dripper in to shore and were about to head home, a snowball was thrown and then the snowball fight commenced! That evening, we had some unfair snowball throwing post-sauna even! I was all warm and aleah sneaked up behind me and stuffed a snowball down my shirt! Revenge .... I must get revenge ....

That night, the moon was so bright and beautiful! We are actually getting a fair amount of darkness these days... Walking across the pad late night is starting to get a little creepy. Time to pull out the head lamp!

The Storm

I woke this morning at 4 AM to the sound of rain pounding down on my tent. Initially I thought I was imagining it, but I quickly realized I wasn't. Pretty soon the storm advanced from rain to howling winds. I have had some difficulty with my tent recently, since the end broke off of one of the poles. After I repaired it, it was almost like new, but the storm definitely put it to the test. The winds were so strong; by 6 AM, the darkening tarp I have secured over my tent with heavy rocks was whipped off. I didn't want to spend the time out in the rain to re-position the tarp on top of my tent, but ventured out to pile extra rocks on top of the tarp--now lying on the ground--so it wouldn't completely fly away. I returned to my tent for another couple hours to ensure that it weathered the storm. Without the extra support of the tarp, the rain fly could only do so much and wind whipped rain up and under the edges of the fly, misting everything inside. Although the tent bucked wildly in the wind for the rest of the morning (and I am a bit worse for the ware) the tent is still standing ...

Sampling Toolik Inlet Series!

Sorry for the delay of this post. This week has been so hectic, I haven't really had any time to catch up on my blog! This week we went out to sample the series of lakes that drain into lake Toolik. We used the helicopter to the furthest lake (since we have so much gear and an inflatable raft with us) and began sampling lake by lake, moving downstream. The helicopter was really fun to ride in and the views from that high up were just amazing! It was fun to see the little Toolik camp shrink as we rose up into the sky.


Me flying out in the helicopter!

Toolik camp (and Lake Toolik) as we flew out to our sampling sites ...

We had beautiful weather the first sampling day and there was not a single cloud in the sky. However, the mosquitoes really enjoy the weather as well and were out in swarms. I was really happy to have my bug shirt, which is basically a shirt made out of netting to keep the mosquitoes from biting. The parts of the shirt (like the back and front and sleeves) that lie directly on your skin are made out of this super tight knit material that the bugs cannot get their probiscus through. There is a hood that zips all the way over your head to protect your face from them as well. I have never seen mosquitoes in such swarms! Imagine standing in a bee hive, but all of the bees were mosquitoes... I learned how to towe for zooplankton and use the hydrolab (which is a really cool piece of equiptment that will tell you depth, temperature, chlorophyll counts, light penetration, etc at any given depth). We also used the Vann Dorn sampler to get water at various depths at each site.

This is a picture of some of the lakes we sampled of the Toolik inlet series.

The second day of sampling, I learned that the myth that the mosquitoes go away when it is raining is actually false. I took an early heli ride out to the lakes we would sample with another team since my whole group doesn't fit into one helicopter. It was pouring rain that morning so I sat with my headnet and my rain jacket on in the downpour, surrounded by mosquitoes. I am not going to lie, I was feeling a little sorry for myself. However, once my team finally arrived, the sun poked through the clouds and we ended up with another beautiful day of sampling!
Beautiful clouds after the rain subsided. All of the little black smudges in this picture are mosquitoes!

When we got back to camp each evening, I still had to attend to all of my lab duties, which made for a few really long days for all of us. However, the time in the field was definitely worth the work.

As a side note, last night I saw a fox right next to my tent! I was unzipping the rain fly on my tent when I spotted a dog-sized creature out of the corner of my eye. My snap reaction was to write it off as a dog, but then I stopped and did a double take and realized that it was actually a fox, standing just a few feet away! I was amazed that my presence didn't bother it more

Cool Runnings

Today was a slow day in the chem lab ... and I still don't get to go out in the field. Cleaned bottles, mixed reagent ... Shook a 4-L bottle of reagent to try to mix it until my arms felt like they were going to fall off...

I did, however, escape a little during the afternoon to go for a short run away around Toolik lake. I realized if I ran fast enough the mosquitoes wouldn't bother me too much (although the nice breeze from the lake helped quite a lot as well!). It was kind of amusing to look behind while running at the swarm of mosquitoes following me. As I was running the clouds billowed in and the wind kicked up, bringing afternoon showers, which forced me back to the lab.

Other than that here are some random fun pictures of Toolik:


This is a picture of Toolik lake and the Brooks range taken a little after midnight. The sky was dusky -- painted with reds, yellows, and oranges -- which made the mountains appear red.


This morning there were 6 of these butterflies that landed in the mud to suck out water and nutrients. We could get really close to all of them.



This is a picture of my tent (the rounded one, not the pointy pyramid) and my view of Toolik I see every morning ...