July 14 2008
Author: Sudeep Chandra

We arrived at the Cherskiy Research station a few days ago.  Check out our location by typing in “Cherskiy Russia” on Google maps. The ride in an old Russian turbo prop plane went much better than I had imagined.  I think the energy of the students, great company, and incredible views from 17,500 feet of an arctic landscape (filled mountain forests and many lowland lakes and rivers) helped me NOT think about the rustic, steel like nature of the plane.  Accommodations at the station have been wonderful.  The barge on which we are living has two toilets (that flush!), a kitchen, a Russian style sauna, showers, and small bunk style rooms that smell of fresh milled larch.

From what I can tell, Cherskiy represents a Shangri-la for a natural historian.  Whether plants, animals, insects or microbes there is so much to observe.  For a place that is bitter cold in the winter (-40C), the summer seasons comes alive with remarkable biological diversity.  One of the primary scientists at the station, Dr. Davidov, provided a short introduction to the area.  There are over 100 bird species, many rodents, wolverines, bears, wolves, and deer in the area.  Yesterday, as we walked into town, a Pika perched up on a rock off the road.  The forest structure near the station is dominated by 2 species of larch trees but there is a strong, riparian transition zone from the large forest to the river. Here, as expected you find willows (dwarf and otherwise), alder, etc..  A remarkable place to study terrestrial plant-animal interactions.

It interesting how similar the arctic environment is to our semi arid ecosystems of the Great Basin in the United States.  Moisture clearly is a major driver of ecosystem process and productivity in both ecosystems. The mechanisms of moisture delivery to the landscape however are vastly different.  In the arctic, the active thaw melt of the permafrost which is 10,000 years or older, controls vegetation composition and production during the summer growing season (with obvious feedbacks of the vegetation to the thaw process).  In our temperate semi arid climate, moisture is derived from snow melt and summer thunderstorms.  There are meadow ecosystems created by spring/ groundwater discharge and surface water impoundments, which produce amazing centers of biological diversity.   The more I walk around the more I realize this landscape is an incredible place to test some of the dominant ecological concepts governing river and lake dynamics.

In temperate climates, much effort is going in to understanding the linkages between terrestrial aquatic environments in recent years.  We are trying to do this at Castle Lake Research station however most of this research occurs in the stream and river ecozones and their adjacent habitats in temperature environments.  The patch work of lakes in this region of the arctic with different hydrological connections would make excellent study sites for the same questions.  Moreover the systems here seem to have a broad range of nutrient (nitrogen, phosphorus, dissolved organic carbon) conditions allowing for broad scale comparisons across watersheds.

Enough science and a little reflection. Much of my “free” time in the last few days have been spent thinking about my mentors in ecology.  Many of whose papers I have read and presentations I have listened to at meetings. Some are dead (Edmondson, Nakano, Polis, Wetzel), retired/ retiring (Richards, Goldman, Kitchell, Moyle, Jassby, Reuter), and others that continue to be the best thinkers in their subdiscipline (Carpenter, Melack, Schladow, Brett, Vander Zanden, Mueller-Solger).  The conversations we have had and/ or the papers you have written have greatly influenced my thoughts and intellectual development.  Moreover many of you have provided opportunities and encouragement to explore new systems and live an adventurous life.   Thank you for your support.  I am living a blessed and incredible life.  All I needed to do is come to the arctic to develop this thought! If all bodes well, hopefully we can make broad scale comparisons between our temperate and arctic ecosystems well into the future. After all, getting here is more than half of the struggle.  Hope everyone back home is well.

Sudeep Chandra
Assistant Professor of Limnology and Conservation Ecology
University of Nevada- Reno