Day 3 (in the middle of sampling)

29.07.17

Still sun shining in Kobbefjord Field Station. The weather should be nice (about 15 °C) for the whole weekend and no wind.

Today Claudia&Claudia finished to sampling the vegetational transect and in the afternoon, they did scientific reports for all sampling.

Just to know something about the NERO line…this permanent vegetation transect was established in July 2007 in order to monitoring future changes in the location of boundary lines between vegetation zones and in the species composition of the plant communities.

About the sampling…We have chosen PLOTs in the vegetation gradient according to the vegetation types and altitude. Each boundary between vegetation zones has been marked by pegs, so we mostly follow the pegs and sampled about 10-15 meters far away the NERO line to not modify the vegetation on the transect.

Claudia Pacelli during the sampling.

The vegetation was classified into types based on the species composition, physiognomy, and species diversity in addition to water contents of the soil, expected snow cover, and terrain aspects.

We mainly sampled:

1. Dwarf shrub heath – different subtypes according to the dominating shrub species, e.g. Vaccinium uliginosum-Betula nana-Salix glauca heath
2. Snow patch
3. Nude soil (soil that is basically not covered by vegetation)

Unlucky we cannot sample in the “fen” that is predominant vegetation in the middle of the transect because it is too wet and we cannot walk by.

Example of HEAT vegetation.

The vegetation around the transect.

Anyway we will compare this 3 types, according also with the altitude. We have established an altitude gradient, from 0 up to 109 meters asl, going up of 20 meters PLOT by PLOT.

What we did? We remove the vegetation on the surface and collect about 5 g of soil. The vegetation was put again on the surface in order to minimize the impact of our sampling on the vegetation. For each plot we sampled in triplicate, for each sample we took measurements of the soil moisture, GPS-positions (accuracy 5-10 m), and took some pictures about the sampling and the surrounding environment.

Measuring the soil moisture.

Nude soil samples.

Vegetation soil samples.

In the evening, as a very good Saturday night we enjoy the time with the other researcher doing very good danish-style pancakes!! Thanks Mathias for cooking these for us and for sharing the PORTO wine with us!

Bye bye from Claudia&Claudia, Mathias, Sebastian and Kristine!!

Tallenna

Tallenna