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AMP'D Blog: Tatiana Vishnivetskaya

4/27/2021

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Tatiana and Karen in Longyearbyen.

Greetings Dear Reader!

You probably have read blogs from my AMP’D teammates, colleagues, friends about our overall successful field work in Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard. Our team overcame all hurdles and obstacles that nature and fate have prepared for us during travel and field work. And I dare to assure you that you will hear more about interesting research coming out of this project. 
Talking with different people I got a lot of questions about what it was like to travel during a worldwide pandemic. Here are my impressions from an international travel in time of Covid-19. Briefly, we have traveled about 12,555 km (7,800 miles), got seven negative Covid-19 test results, stayed in quarantine hotel for 10 days, took six planes and roundtrip 14-hours boat ride, experienced extreme weather with temperature as low as -27°C (-16°F), strong wind about 35 km/h (22 m/h), zero visibility due to wind-driven snow, and rough landing at crosswind in Atlanta. We even tested gender-oriented coats designed for polar regions by Russian company BASK.
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Our travel on March 1st from Atlanta, USA to Oslo, Norway through Amsterdam, Netherlands was satisfying – there were just a few travelers. However, the first impression was deceiving. At every step we encountered unexpected situations. There was everything from sudden travel cancelations due to new Covid-19 regulations, to risk of departure due to wrong accusation of having positive Covid-19 test, to hotel evacuation due to avalanche danger. I could not even count how many times we changed airfare or hotel reservations. 
Our stay in the quarantine hotel Thon at the Oslo Airport was not bad. We were able to leave the hotel and go outside for a nice walk on snowy paths through woods or visit a beautiful Keplerstjerna or Kepler star, a 45-meter-high monument, to have distanced and masked outdoor AMP’D group daily meetings. Some of us even hiked to a few historical landscapes, e.g., Trandumskogen War Memorial; Gardermoen Raceway; or King Rakni’s mound, the largest grave mound in the Scandinavia; or Huag, the oldest farm in the area. 
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On March 12th we were released from the quarantine hotel and after two Covid-19 tests we boarded a plane to the island of Spitsbergen in Svalbard archipelago, which is located between mainland Norway and the North Pole
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​We took advantage of being in Longyearbyen and visited the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a long-term storage facility where the world’s largest collection of crop diversity is preserved for future generations. Finally, on March 16th after 14 hours boat ride, we reached Ny-Ålesund, a small town at 79°N. Against all odds our field work was successful. 
The team cored active layer and permafrost from a few locations around Ny-Ålesund. Samples from five shallow and 3 deeper boreholes with the total length of about 10 meters were collected and transported to the University of Tennessee Knoxville. Our travel back home was shorter, just four days. Even it took a whole month of March to get field work done, I have a feeling that time in Svalbard flew by incredibly fast. ​​​
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AMP'D Blog: Katie Sipes - Lessons from the field: the hardest person to convince is yourself

4/20/2021

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​Imposter syndrome is feeling like you're a fraud in the situation. This is typically a common feeling, especially for scientists. This was no exception during the planning and execution of the AMP’D 2021 field season. This would be my third field season to Ny-Ålesund, and third time is supposed to be a charm. While the season and experience was beyond amazing, there were recurring things that made this imposter feeling more apparent. Above all the common (and not so common) field work trials and tribulations, I learned that most often, the hardest person to convince is yourself. 

Despite planning and successfully executing a field season in 2018, I had my doubts that we would pull off all the logistics this time. Even though I had sent all our gear up a year in advance (thanks covid), I knew I’d forget things. These thoughts spiral into whether or not I should be the project coordinator or even be on this fieldwork trip.
This trip taught me to speak up and believe in your own abilities. The permafrost drill and all the metal rods and barrel broke. I pondered if I should share that I know how to weld, which could fix the items. I didn’t want to seem like I was bragging or talking about myself too much. After everything was certainly broken, I had to share. Welding actually fixed it- not by me, but by the generous wizard that works in Kings Bay’s shop. Maybe if welding hadn’t been brought up we would have stopped drilling.

In Ny-Ålesund, the residents are mainly Norwegian, and therefore speak Norwegian. Which is mutually intelligible with Swedish and Danish* (kinda). I’m a self-taught Swedish speaker and can get around until I need to show my American passport. Turns out, most of the residents thought that I was fluent Swedish and wrote me off as a Swede. I was speaking (in Swedish) to the chef, telling her that all the food she made was amazing and that she was so kind. She then says, “sorry, I don’t know that much Swedish.” I was floored ‘HAH, me neither’, I thought. But when you commit, and speak the sounds and listen then the brain fills in the rest of the sentence/meaning == boom, passable Swede.

I want to be an astronaut. This is not a childhood dream, but a more recent realization that I could actually be an astronaut- so let’s go for it. Because of this goal, I love all things NASA. The first day we were in Ny-Ålesund I looked out the window and saw a NASA equipment container. The chances of my favorite thing being in my favorite place - I was gobsmacked ! Especially because the USA doesn’t have a research station in Ny-Ålesund. I laughed so hard I shed a tear. The universe has a strange way of reassuring us. 

Imposter syndrome is a bitch. Most of all, I learned that I can (and should) learn from anyone willing to teach me. I need to remain humble but give myself credit. I hope these lessons help someone struggling with imposter syndrome or, at least, give them the solace that we all feel it and the gumption to believe in themselves. And certainly, fake it till you make it. 
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AMP'D Blog: Karen Lloyd

4/13/2021

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One thing I love about field work is that no matter how many fancy degrees you have, no matter how smart you think you are, nature will find a way to lay you low. This permafrost drilling project was no different. We figured the rocks would be our downfall. But it was metal that took us down in the end.

Despite having worked on permafrost in the past, I had never actually drilled into permafrost myself. So, I went with Tatiana Vishnivetskaya and Andrey Abramov, my well-seasoned permafrost scientist colleagues, to do reconnaissance in the summer and try to anticipate any problems that would arise when we did the real drilling under snowcover in the early spring. 
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​Drill bit for the core barrel.
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Karen and Donato brainstorm a solution to the breaking rods.
We found rocks – lots of them. Enough to potentially stop even our powerful drill bits (pictured below).

​So that summer, we poked around for the most rock-free zone and marked the locations on our GPS. When we finally got to do the drilling in March 2021 (a year late due to covid), we were ready for the rocks to do their worst. 
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After the first two days of drilling at Bayelva, Julia Boike’s twenty-year permafrost monitoring site named after the river that surrounds it, the rocks put up a fight, but Andrey’s masterful drilling techniques dragged up core section after core section, often drilling holes straight through big rocks. We discovered that our core liners were too short to fit inside the core barrels, despite sending a million emails back and forth with measurements, but some swift Leatherman work from Donato Giovannelli on site resulted in a core liner extension that worked great for the rest of the trip. After a couple of days of drilling, we had to give up on the first hole before we got to the full permafrost depth (~2 m) because we hit bedrock. There just wasn’t enough soil to drill.
So, we scoured the new wonderfully detailed geological maps made by the Norwegian Polar Institute at night and picked out sites that might have deeper soil depth for the next day.
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Drilling at Bayelva. Pictured are Donato Giovannelli, James Bradley, and Andrey Abramov.
​By this time, Christian Rasmussen and I had become proficient at snow pit digging, so when we found a new location, we dug a pit into the snow quickly and started anew. Everything was going great. The sun was shining, the drill wasn’t over-pressured, the cores weren’t freezing to the ground, and I had finally mastered using the unwieldy giant pipe wrench to unscrew the drill bit and pull out the core liner. It was the perfect setting for a theatrical downfall. 

With no warning, the 3 inch screw on the top of the drilling rod sheared clean through, leaving the broken fragment screwed deep within the drill head. At first, we were afraid the whole drilling project was over, but Donato “Michaelangelo’ed” the broken fragment out of the drill head by hooking it with a screwdriver. 
We spent the rest of the day trying to troubleshoot the problem of the sheared screw. Looking at the broken fragment seemed to suggest that the metal itself was bad and had failed even though it was not experiencing much torque. ​
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Core barrel drilling into wet material.
We tried another core barrel. It retrieved one core and then broke on the next one. We tried another core barrel. That one broke immediately. Then another. Same thing. We were running out of core barrels. We managed to identify one drill rod that was capable of retrieving cores without breaking. But we still needed a core barrel with a functional screw. 
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This is when my PhD student, Katie Sipes, radioed in to say, “I don’t know if you guys need this or not, but I know how to weld.” Welding, it turns out, was the answer. It ended up being easier just to get the machine shop guy to cut the screw off of the good rod and weld it onto a core barrel. So, Katie’s skills were kept in reserve for another trip. But now we had a working rig. 

​We started the next day with high hopes at our second location, Kvadehuken, a starkly beautiful peninsula that apparently translates to “bad corner” from old Dutch.

​Here, we managed to drill down to bedrock past the all important 2 meters permafrost depth. Success! I did a full-on happy dance when we hit 2 m. That was the goal of the trip and we had achieved it. But, we were drilling in a shallow brine lake, so the cores were coming up wet, which is fairly dissatisfying when one is going for the frozen stuff. But I am told that it still qualifies as permafrost because it is below the freezing point of water. Whatever. I don’t make the rules.
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Karen delighted to reach the permafrost. Success!
​But to feel satisfied, we really needed something with rock hard ice in it. Something that looked like the permafrost of our dreams. 
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Samples brought back to the University of Tennessee for future study.
For that, we went back to Bayelva, closer to the Climate Change tower run by the National Research Center of Italy. Here, a core barrel and drilling rods refrained from breaking long enough that we managed to hit the jackpot. An ice layer that shone like diamonds, and then frozen soil beneath. The ice line was right at 2m, where Julia’s data predicted it would be. ​

​Once again, field work showed me the limits of my own ability to predict all possible outcomes. I went to Svalbard fearing rocks, but sheared metal ended up being our limiting factor. Despite all the tough breaks, through the ingenuity and good spirits of our team and the amazing people in Ny Ålesund, we still managed to bring back a freezer full of samples!
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L-R: James Bradley, Donato Giovannelli, Karen Lloyd and Andrey Abramov.
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Margaret writes an AMP'D blog post for the UK Arctic Office, NERC

4/12/2021

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Margaret writes a piece for the UK Arctic Office on the AMP'D project, which is published on their website today, and copied below.
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The Arctic is warming faster than other areas of Earth. For scientists studying climate change in the Arctic, fieldwork is important for observing and studying how Arctic warming is affecting environmental systems. This past month, I participated in an expedition to Svalbard supported by the US Department of Energy, British Antarctic Survey and Norwegian Polar Institute.

The project, led by Dr. Karen Lloyd and Dr. Tatiana Vishnivetskaya of the University of Tennessee, is called Arctic Microbial Permafrost Degradation (or AMP’d, for short). Our goal is to identify the activity of microbes in permafrost as it thaws due to climate warming. Permafrost contains large amounts of trapped organic matter. When it thaws this organic matter gets decomposed by microbes and fuels the microbial production of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane. Understanding the microbial contribution to greenhouse gas emissions from thawing permafrost can help climate modellers better predict future climate warming. At present, microbial activity in Svalbard permafrost is not well understood. With this project we aim to understand how microbial communities in Svalbard will respond to permafrost thaw and climate warming.
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Doing fieldwork in Svalbard during the Coronavirus pandemic comes with some challenges. Each member of the team had to do at least four Covid-19 tests and a 10-day hotel quarantine in Oslo before we could travel to Svalbard. After all the tests and the quarantine, we were confident that we were healthy and ready for fieldwork in Svalbard.

Our first stop in Svalbard was in Longyearbyen, the population centre of Svalbard. From there we took the MS Farm, a small charter boat, on a 14-hour journey to Ny-Ålesund, the small research town that served as our fieldwork base. Our route from Longyearbyen to Ny-Ålesund took us through the sound of Forlandsundet separating Prins Karls Forland and the west side of Spitsbergen. The boat slowly carved a path through the sea ice and allowed us to see some spectacular views of mountains and ice on our journey to Ny-Ålesund.


When we arrived in Ny-Ålesund our first task was to find the fieldwork gear, assemble the drill, and set up the lab where we would prepare permafrost samples for microbiological analyses. 
We divided into a “drilling team” and a “lab team” with the drilling team focused on finding suitable areas near Ny-Alesund for drilling permafrost, and the lab team focused on sectioning permafrost cores and preparing them for future microbiological analyses in our home laboratories.​

Contamination is a central challenge for drilling any material for microbiology investigations, including permafrost. Often fluids are used to support the drilling process but using drilling fluids can contaminate permafrost with foreign microbes. Since our investigations focused on in situ microbes, avoiding contam-ination was essential. Avoiding contamination is particularly important when the abundance of microbes in the permafrost is low, which preliminary investigations of the microbiology of this area suggest. Con-tamination may obscure real microbial signals. Our drill did not use drilling fluids, and because of this, friction between the drill barrel (the rotating cylinder at the end of the drill that cut out permafrost core sections) and the surrounding permafrost created heat that could melt the permafrost. Preventing the core material from getting too warm during drilling was therefore also important. ​
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Permafrost core sections were removed from the earth in ~30 cm intervals in core liners that held together the structure of the permafrost. Varying with depth, the permafrost material was dry, loose, and sandy, and sometimes it was hard and consolidated like rock. Coloured layers could be seen at different depths of the core from the same borehole hinting that different layers have different geochemistry and different in situ microbial metabolisms. In the lab, we separated each core section into smaller sections so that specific permafrost layers could be analyzed for microbiology and biogeochemistry. The cores from each of these were stored frozen and transported to laboratories in London, Naples, New Jersey, and Knoxville, for experiments and analyses that will soon help us understand how microbes in Svalbard permafrost are affected by and participate in Arctic warming.
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AMP'D Blog: Matteo Selci

4/3/2021

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Left Longyearbyen in the early morning, 14 hours of navigation through sea-ice by boat were necessary to land in Ny-Ålesund, a small town on the west side of Svalbard that brings together several research institutes from different countries. After some hours spent in courses about rules, safety, and all the precautions against the wildlife present outside of the town, the organization of field and laboratory activities finally began.

The purpose of this scientific campaign is to study the thawing of permafrost, looking for active microbial communities involved in organic matter degradation and greenhouse gas release. So day by day, our research group is divided into two main teams, the "Drilling Team", and the "Lab Team". The "Drilling Team" has to look for spots with ideal geological features and get there by snowmobile.  Before starting to drill, reaching the frozen ground is necessary, sometimes shovelling half a meter of snow.

Then, the drill can be placed and activated, trying to get more permafrost cores from as deep as possible. Moreover, to allow safe working conditions, one or two people have to stand on guard against polar bears.

The obtained permafrost cores are then transferred to the laboratory where the "Lab Team" section the frozen cores into smaller parts, and then subsamples are taken to be stored and then analyzed in the next months following a multidisciplinary approach.

Days go fast and we hope to get as many samples as possible!

Twitter: @matteo_selci
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James receives the IC-DLI Deep Life Paper of 2020 Award

4/1/2021

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James receives the International Center for Deep Life Investigation Deep Life Paper of 2020 Award “for assembling the first global map of subseafloor microbial processes involved in organic carbon degradation and subseafloor microbial energy turnover under different redox states”, published in Science Advances, which was selected from among the most significant research papers of 2020 proposed by the IC-DLI community, based on novelty and potential for long-term impact. James will present the work in a forthcoming Deep Life webinar series.
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