James is in Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard, for the first field campaign of the NSF and NERC-funded SUN SPEARS project, investigating seasonal changes in microbial communities in Arctic soils. Accelerated climate warming in the Arctic is causing significant reductions in the extent of glaciers and ice sheets. As glaciers retreat, pioneer soils are uncovered, supporting emerging microbial communities which drive biogeochemical transformations. The SUN SPEARS project will characterize the year-round soil biological, thermal and hydrological properties, to better understand the fate of emerging Arctic soils and develop continuous models of soil biogeochemical dynamics. The multi-disciplinary team are busy collecting the first sets of biological and chemical samples from Midtre Lovénbreen, and are installing several monitoring stations which include arrays of geo-electrical sensors.
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James convened the session '8f Understanding the co-evolution of Earth's interior, its surface, and its microorganisms' at Goldschmidt 2021 with Dominik Hülse and Emily Zakem. Highlights included a keynote talk from Stephanie Dutkiewicz on modelling ecology and biogeochemistry in the global ocean, and an invited talk from Rui Zhao on ammonia-oxidizing archaea in marine sediments.
Congratulations to Bradley Lab PhD student Margaret Cramm who has been awarded a grant from the Earth and Space Foundation for her project: "Dispersal of life from the deep biosphere to the cryosphere". The award provides funding towards a field trip to sample an Arctic hot spring, to test the hypothesis that thermophilic organisms capable of long-term dormancy are rising from the deep hot biosphere to the cold surface biosphere in geothermal fluids.
Congratulations to Margaret and Amy who each presented excellent posters at the 2021 NHM Student Conference in London!
New paper 'How allogenic factors affect succession in glacier forefields' in Earth Science Reviews5/17/2021 'How allogenic factors affect succession in glacier forefields' published in Earth Science Reviews.
Here we critically review the use of chronosequence approaches in glacier forefields, showing strong effects of initial site conditions, geomorphic disturbances and biogeomorphological processes. Congratulations to recent PhD-graduate Robin Wojcik on leading this effort, with contributions from James, Liane Benning (GFZ Potsdam) and Jana Eichel (Utrecht University). Link to paper: HERE. James and Rey are in Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard, together with international collaborators Bartek Luks (IG PAS, Poland) and Catherine Larose (Laboratoire Ampère, Lyon, France) on the SIOS-funded project IN-SPACE. They are collecting samples from the Midtre Lovénbreen glacier catchment to look at how spring melting affects microbial community dynamics and biogeochemical cycles.
Bradley lab PhD student Margaret Cramm and supervisor James have been awarded a Center for Advanced Studies Short Term Fellowship to Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich (LMU) for their project 'How does permafrost thaw affect microbial activity and function in Arctic soil?'. Margaret and James will visit LMU as CAS Fellows, where they will be hosted by Professor Bill Orsi at the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences. Margaret will carry out an extended secondment in Bill's lab at LMU to develop a combined genetic and stable isotope labelling approach for the analyses of active biological communities within Arctic permafrost under different warming regimes.
James, Amy and Rey are in Svalbard for fieldwork associated with the INTERACT-funded project AMBER-ICE. They are sampling surface snow and ice from Foxfonna glacier, and plan to analyze the samples to understand what kinds of ecosystems these environments support and how they are susceptible to seasonal changes and climate change. They are supported in the field by the Czech Arctic Research Station in Longyearbyen.
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.
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
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.
AMP'D Blog: Katie Sipes - Lessons from the field: the hardest person to convince is yourself4/20/2021
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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