...and the full moon rising...
This is the scene that I saw as I closed my eyes last night... I have been picking a lot of blueberries lately...
And THIS is the scene that I woke up to (and every other day this week)... yuck!
For a desert-like ecosystem, the tundra has been awfully wet! Fog... rain... more fog... oh a little glimpse of the sun! ... and here comes the rain and fog... This is pretty much how the last week or two has progressed, AND it is supposed to rain until Monday. But that’s okay, as long as it doesn’t rain on Tuesday when my dad arrives! He’ll be here for a week :) I have lots of fun things planned for us to do (like berry picking and fishing... are you starting to get the distinct impression that that’s all there is to do up here?).
So who wants to learn about the Tundra?!
Tundra refers to areas where the tree growth is hindered by low temperatures and short growing seasons and usually refers only to the areas where the subsoil is permafrost, or permanently frozen soil. The vegetation is composed mostly of dwarf shrubs, sedges and grasses, mosses, and lichens, though scattered trees grow in some tundra (not anywhere near where I am though). The ecotone (that means the area between two ecological zones) between the tundra and the forest is known as the tree line!
The Arctic tundra is a vast area of stark landscape and is frozen for much of the year. The soil there is frozen from 25–90 cm down, and it is impossible for trees to grow. Instead, bare and sometimes rocky land can only support low growing plants such as moss, heath, and lichen. There are two main seasons, winter and summer. During the winter it is very cold and dark, with the average temperature around −28 °C, sometimes dipping as low as −50 °C. However, extreme cold temperatures on the tundra do not drop as low as those experienced in taiga areas further south (for example, Canada's lowest temperatures were recorded in locations south of the tree line – I thought that was an interesting tidbit!). During the summer, temperatures rise somewhat, and the top layer of the permafrost melts leaving the ground very soggy and covered in marshes, lakes, bogs and streams during the warm months. The permafrost thaws just enough to let plants grow and reproduce, but because the ground below this is frozen, the water cannot sink any lower. Generally daytime temperatures during the summer rise to about 12 °C but can often drop to 3 °C or even below freezing – it doesn’t even feel like summer anymore, feels closer to late October!
The tundra is a very windy area, with winds often blowing upwards of 48–97 km/h. However, in terms of precipitation, it is desert-like, with only about 15–25 cm falling per year (the summer is typically the season of maximum precipitation). Now this is one area I would like to point out! It does not feel very desert like right now... I figure we have gotten that total amount of precipitation in the last month alone!
Notable animals in the Arctic tundra include caribou (reindeer), musk ox, arctic hare, arctic fox, snowy owl, lemmings, and polar bears (only the extreme north). A severe threat to the tundras, specifically to the permafrost, is global warming. The melting of the permafrost in a given area on human time scales (decades or centuries) could radically change which species can survive there. Another concern is that about one third of the world's soil-bound carbon is in taiga and tundra areas. When the permafrost melts, it releases carbon in the form of carbon dioxide and methane, both of which are greenhouse gases. In the 1970s the tundra was a carbon sink (that means it absorbs carbon from the atmosphere, such as a forest), but today, it is a carbon source (releases carbon into the atmosphere as global warming reduces permafrost).
And before I sign off, I finally got the pictures of my first fish! It looks awfully small wrapped up in those big O’Donnell/Corning hands! Haha. And unfortunately the picture doesn’t do the beautiful colors of the spots and stripes justice... it was the prettiest fish I have seen yet, and I’m not just saying that because I caught it!
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