Field Notes
During, before, and after the field course, Polaris students and faculty share their thoughts through journal entries.
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Student Research – Lindsey Parkinson and Dylan Broderick
The university students of the Polaris Project each work on independent projects. Periodically, I will share the stories of these remarkable young people... Featuring Lindsey Parkinson and Dylan Broderick.
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Life at Pleistocene Park
As the cold weather blew in, we stopped drilling for a couple of days and headed back to the Northeast Science Station, I pause to reflect at the tough life of the workers in the wilderness that surrounds Pleistocene Park.
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Two Tales of Drilling in Pleistocene Park
The interesting part of fieldwork is that, as we begin to collecting the data, we have also collected some interesting stories.
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Pleistocene Park
What was it like to live in the time of the mammoths? How was the environment different then? What animals lived then, and what was their ecosystem like?
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A New View on the Environment
As scientists, sometimes we need a bigger picture to understand what is happening.
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Science is life at the Northeast Science Station
Spending every waking (and sleeping) moment with like-minded ecologists really allows us students to come into our own as scientific beings.
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Advanced Flower Picking
My project is the first steps of the biodiversity survey. I find, picture, and identify as many of the flora and fauna in the region as I can then put the pictures and names together to create a field guide to Cherskiy. It would be impossible to categorize all life
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Moss is Boss and Other Adventures
Mosses are an extremely important player when it comes to insulating the permafrost. With the changing fire regimes and higher densities of deciduous larch trees, what happens to the moss?
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Crunch Time
We’ve entered crunch time, with students and PIs working feverishly to collect data as the end of our time in Siberia quickly approaches.
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Highlight on Student Research – Ludda Ludwig of St. Olaf College
Ludda’s research is looking at the rate that the microbes in the soil respond after these different types of burns by looking at enzyme activity in the soil.
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Highlight on Student Research – Vasily Lebedev
The university students of the Polaris Project each work on independent research. Periodically, I will share the stories of these remarkable young people. Vasily Lebedev – Graduate Student at Moscow State University
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Creative Contraptions
Creative Contraptions... What are these two devices used for?
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Duvannyi Yar – A Trip Back in Time
Last night after our 9:00 p.m. dinner, we all piled onto the barge hooked up to a tug boat and headed up the Kolyma River. At 1:30 p.m. just after lunch today, we arrived at a magical place – Duvannyi Yar.
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Mt. Rodinka – Source of the Yedoma?
Mt. Rodinka, a small mountain (351 m) rises from essentially sea level east of the Northeast Science Station. It sits in front of a many higher and larger mountains in the distance. Rodinka, I have been told means either “Birthmark” or “Little Mother Earth” in Russian.
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Duvannyi Yar
The barge casted off after dinner on the 11th, around 10:30 PM. By 1PM the next day the hills began to sparkle with exposed permafrost. Everyone was excited for our fieldtrip. New places to sample for some of us, new adventures for all of us.
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