Channel equipment arrives on site...mostly

Today, we hired Arni from Extreme Iceland to use his companies' super jeep to ferry our equipment up the river to the point closest to the site of the channel location, which is about a half-mile from the river. Arni was great! When we arrived, he had already loaded the first load of our gear into the super jeep. Here's some photos of Arni, his super jeep in action, and the channel installation team:

When we got to the snow drifts by the river, which previously blocked our passage, we discovered that the power company had plowed the drifts early in the morning or yesterday. We can now officially drive up the river!

After that first trip, I followed the super jeep up the river in the Veidi's grey truck. Moving all of the gear up the river took 3 trips in the super jeep and 2 in the grey truck. We have a lot of stuff, but it is a little closer to the site of the channel experiment.

Next, we started the arduous task of hauling all of the gear to the channel experiment site. We ferried over all of the equipment Philip needed to get started: some 2-inch tubing, the heat exchangers, a couple action packers, and some miscellaneous tubing.

After that, we divided and concerned. Philip worked on the heat exchangers:

Alex spent the rest of the afternoon ferrying 2-inch white tubing. Each roll is 50-lbs. Alex is unstoppable.

Tanner and I spent the rest of the day clearing snow from feeder stream. We have about 13 meters to go...

Here's us at the end of the day. It was a tough one, but we've surmounted most of the hurdles we encountered last week and have moved about half of the equipment to the channel experiment site.

p.s., In case you are wondering, it looks like we now have plenty of heat for our experiments. Jim's Hole (our metal reinforced heating tank) is 53.6˚C and the hot pot is 43.6˚C.

Channel experiment equipment in transport

Alex keeps remarking in wonder about how many different moves some of our equipment have made to ultimately become part of our channel experiment. Take our two inch tubing, it transports water from way up the header stream to the heat exchangers. We now have 1600 feet of this stuff, totaling about 800 lbs. Half of this stuff came from the manufacturer to Bozeman, MT and then was transported to Iceland as baggage in November 2014.

This tubing was transported into the Veidi, then moved outside the Veidi, then moved inside the Veidi, then moved outside...  Here's Alex and Philip inspecting all of our supplies.

The other 1/2 of the tubing was used in the original channel experiment. It was transported back from the field, stored at the Veidi for 2 years, and is now being transported back to the field. Here's Tanner hauling the tubing back to the Veidi in 2013.

Anyway, we have a super jeep booked for tomorrow and we have piled up everything we need to transport out to the site. Here it is in all its glory: 1600 feet of 2" tubing, 5 coolers, 4 heat exchangers, 3 spiril heat exchangers, Philip's nutrient drip system, > 200 lbs of tiles, and all sorts of other random stuff.

Hopefully, by tomorrow evening we'll have most of this stuff up at the site.

Channel experiments infrastructure

Alex, Philip, Tanner, and I are in Iceland trying to get this summer's channel experiments started. This summer we plan on looking at how temperature and nitrogen, an important fertilizer of algal growth, influences biofilm development, composition, and ecosystem process. We've run into some expected, but frustrating problems we are trying to surmount. This winter, South Eastern Iceland received a lot more snow than normal. Both of the regular access routes (down the well road & up the river) are not accessible to normal trucks due to large snow drifts. Here's the drift blocking our access to the river:

It doesn't look like much, but you need a special super jeep with a high clearance and 38-inch wide tires to get through those drifts. Each day we have been walking 2.5 - 3 miles up the river.

When we arrived at our site for the channel experiments on Tuesday, we discovered that one of our hot pots that we used to create the temperature treatments was now cold. Water is piped down from a source stream to 2 heat exchangers in a warm pond (~ 25˚C), then water from one of those heat exchangers is directed to another heat exchanger in a hot pot (~ 60˚C). We mix the water coming out of these three heat exchangers and from the source stream to create our 5 temperature treatments.

Our 60˚C hot pot has gone cold; so, we can't have temperature treatments above ~20˚C. We've been working frantically to try and find a similarly hot pot or restore our old hot pot. We've tried enclosing some hot spots in the main pond with retaining walls, but that hasn't resulted in a lot of extra heat.

We've also tried diverting the snow melt. Not the most high tech solution, I know. Tomorrow, we'll know how well that worked.

Our other problems is that our source stream is completely covered in meters of snow. Its buried in that valley. I swear.

Tanner and I have been solving that problem the old fashion way: with shovels.

We hope to start hauling the channel components out to the site on Monday and Tuesday.

Getting close to it. . . . . .

Lots of activity in the past few months, despite the lack of blog posts. Some of the team (Alex, Philip, Jim, and Tanner) is leaving for Iceland in 10 days to start building the experimental channels.  Here are a few shots of our new header tanks, experimental chambers, and nutrient dripping gear. Now, if only Icelandair would allow 20 bags per passenger. . . . .


New header tanks (a la Jim hood) catching lots of attention on MSU campus. . .

Alex's lovely new chambers . . .

A VERY studly dude. . . .

Nutrient dripping apparatus (a la Phillip). . ..

Planning our 2015 field season

Now starts the daunting (and mostly exciting) task of planning our upcoming summer field season.  It's hard to stay focused on something so distant in the future, but May is going to creep up and pounce on us if we don't start the process.   The crux of the matter is scheduling our tasks so that (a) major events do not overlap, and (b) we have enough team members on the ground at any given point to pull off our research. There's no doubt that things will NOT go exactly as planned, but at least we'll be organized!

Hoodie's graphic to help us 'visualize' the timing of things.

Planning our new set of heat exchangers will occupy our thoughts this spring. We're lucky to have Philip Johnson with us (our engineering faculty member at U of Alabama), and he has already designed the new expanded HEX system. We will essentially be doubling our experimental channel system, and this requires twice the HEX capacity with some clever new stainless coils planned for the super-hot pot. We are all steeped in physics envy as Phillip shows us calculations that actually predict a real outcome. . . . .woh.  Check out this photo from one of our recent papers:  HERE

In 2015, we will not be adding nutrients to streams across the landscape, but we will need to enrich half of our experimental channels. This means more planning with respect to which multi-channel pumps to use, what nutrient concentration to target, and how to make everything run smoothly so we can just kick back and let the Science and Nature papers roll in. . .  :)  :)

More soon. . . . .

We're back!

Well folks. . . . it's been a while. and we've got some big news to report!  We just received additional funding from the National Science Foundation to continue our research in Iceland. This will give us the opportunity to explore the interaction between climate warming (the primary focus of our last grant) and nutrient enrichment in river ecosystems.

The upper valley. . . 

Alex Huryn, Jim Hood, Wyatt Cross, and Jill Welter soaking it in.


The heat exchanger in stream 7 (our whole-ecosystem warming experiment) needed some repair, and we spent part of a day cleaning, retooling, and stabilizing.  Still working like a charm (knock on wood!).  

Alex working on the heat exchanger.  Jim and Wyatt holding strong on peanut gallery duties.

Day one. . just off the flight from Denver. . tired and full of ideas!

Looking down towards the future location of our 'next-generation' experimental channels

Both Jill and Jim gave seminars at the IFF, and we spent some quality time catching up with folks and planning for next summer.  Can't wait to get started in May. . .  . stay tuned for additional posts!. .  we'll try to keep this site a bit more active now!

Wyatt

Joint Aquatic Sciences Meeting in Portland

The team recently convened in Portland for some good ole-fashioned science fun.  Just look at that enthusiasm in the back seat!!

But, seriously, we had a great time interacting with friends and colleagues, and enjoying all the good stuff Portland has to offer. And the best part - Iceland talks were scattered throughout the entire meeting!  

Williamson, T. J.; Cross, W. F.; Welter, J. R.; Benstead, J. P.; Hood, J. M.; Huryn, A. D.; Johnson , P. W.; WARMING ALTERS THE FUNCTIONAL COMPOSITION AND STOICHIOMETRY OF AQUATIC BIOFILMS 

Nelson, D.; Benstead, J. P.; Cross, W. F.; Huryn, A. D.; Hood, J. M.; Johnson, P. W.; Junker, J. R.; Gíslason, G. M.; Ólafsson, J. S.; EFFECTS OF EXPERIMENTAL WHOLE-STREAM WARMING ON BENTHIC INVERTEBRATE COMMUNITY STRUCTURE 

Hood, J. M.; Benstead, J. P.; Cross, W. F.; Huryn, A. D.; Nelson, D.; Johnson, P. W.; Junker, J. R.; Gíslason, G. M.; Ólafsson, J. S.; INFLUENCE OF WARMING ON NITROGEN AND PHOSPHORUS UPTAKE AND KINETICS: RESULTS FROM A WHOLE-STREAM WARMING EXPERIMENT 

Cross, W. F.; Benstead, J. P.; Huryn, A. D.; Hood, J. M.; Welter, J. R.; Junker, J. R.; Nelson, D.; Williamson, T. W.; Johnson, P. W.; Gislason and Olafsson, G. J.; TOWARDS UNDERSTANDING SHORT- AND LONG-TERM RESPONSES TO WARMING USING A NATURAL GEOTHERMAL LABORATORY

Junker, J. R.; Cross, W. F.; Benstead, J. P.; Huryn, A. D.; Hood, J. M.; Nelson, D.; Gíslason, G. M.; Ólafsson, J. S.; EFFECTS OF TEMPERATURE ON ENERGY AND ELEMENT STORAGE IN STREAM ECOSYSTEMS 

Welter, J. R.; Williamson, T. J.; Cross, W. F.; Hood, J. M.; Benstead, J. P.; Huryn, A. D.; Johnson, P. W.; Ahles, A. M.; Goldschmidt, J. B.; NITROGEN FIXATION AMPLIFIES THE TEMPERATURE-DEPENDENCE OF PRIMARY PRODUCTION IN STREAMS

O'Gorman, E. J.; Pichler, D. E.; Petchey, O. L.; Woodward, G. W.; CHANGES IN FOOD WEB STRUCTURE ALONG A GEOTHERMAL GRADIENT 

Furey, P. C.; Welter, J. R.; Ahles, A.; Goldschmidt, J.; Nelson, D.; WHAT DO THE ALGAE SAY? WINTER PATTERNS IN NITROGREN-FIXING ALGAL ASSEMBLAGES IN STREAMS IN THE HENGILL REGION OF ICELAND

Ahles, A. M.; Welter, J. R.; Goldschmidt, J. B.; Sander, D. R.; Furey, P. C.; THE EFFECT OF TEMPERATURE ON NITROGEN FIXATION IN NOSTOC SPECIES IN STREAMS IN THE HENGILL REGION OF ICELAND 

Goldschmidt, J. B.; Welter, J. R.; Ahles, A. M.; Williamson, T. J.; THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN NITROGEN FIXATION AND TEMPERATURE: WHAT CAN VARIOUS METHODS TELL US? 

Olafsson, J. S.; Demars, B.; Gislason, G. M.; Magnusdottir, R. Þ.; GEOTHERMAL STREAM ECOSYSTEMS AS SENTINELS FOR CLIMATE WARMING IN LOTIC ECOSYSTEMS

Gislason, G. M.; Olafsson, J. S.; GLACIAL RIVER ECOSYSTEMS IN ICELAND AND THE EFFECT OF GLOBAL WARMING ON THEIR BIOLOGICAL COMMUNITIES

One highlight of the trip was biking to and from the meeting. This helped wake us up after long evenings of collegial activities!

BUT, it didn't always work. . . shall we say Benstead was 'over-scienced' on the last day?

All in all, a great week!!  So fun to be energized by an amazing group of friends and colleagues.