The highs and lows of winter fieldwork

It's the middle of January and the December fieldwork is finally finished. This was stripped-down sampling, because of the short days and (often) long walks into the site. It gets light at around 10 am at the moment, dark around 5 pm. That doesn't leave much time, especially with a one-and-a-half hour walk in either direction. Fortunately, we got two days of good weather, and Sveinbjörn was able to drive us all the way into both sites the second day. We did not get the microbial samples or diel oxygen data from OH2 (for want of a $2 screwdriver!), but got the benthic invertebrate and algal samples, and did the salt and ammonium slugs in both the warmed and reference streams. Not bad for one of the toughest times of the year. The heat exchanger is cranking away, with about a 2.7 C increase. Thanks to Jón, Sveinbjörn and Friddi for helping. Alex gets here on 1 February and then we start up all over again. At least we'll have a bit more light then.