Alaska: Getting There and Research Projects

The ferry journey to Juneau

Because Juneau is only accessible by sea or by air, we took a three day ferry trip through the Inside Passage. The MV Columbia (our home for the next three days) left port under brilliant sunshine from the small city of Bellingham, just south of the Canadian Border. This was the last we would see of the sun for the next three days, with the exception of a few tiny patches of blue sky. The ferry ride was largely uneventful, with the only real excitement being the late night rescue of a fishing boat which had run aground. One of the professors also gave a lecture in the ferry's bar, we saw an old deserted cannery, and stopped off for breakfast one morning in a small touristy town called Ketchikan. As part of the faculty on this trip, we were sleeping cabins. The students on the other hand had to rough it on deck cheers in the open solarium. The scenery all around the ferry was continually awesome, and it reminded me a lot of the Marlborough Sounds back home.

Sunset on the ferry

We finally arrived in Juneau at 7 am on Monday morning, and since then it has been all on! Jenessa, Katherine and I (the three graduate students who are helping out) have been kept pretty busy. We've been teaching and attending lecture classes, driving the students around (to the bar in downtown Juneau on more than one occasion), planning out the activities for each day, and then finally passing out in bed at the end of the day. We haven't had a lot of time off to explore on our own, but it also hasn't all been hard work: The entire group spent Tuesday morning walking around the beach at Sunshine Cove, learning about all the organisms that live there. On Thursday we visited the Alaska State Museum in the morning, and the Alaskan Brewery in the afternoon, both of which were pretty cool. And on Saturday everyone took a two hour walk up to the top of the Mount Roberts Tramway, where we ate some dinner, took in the spectacular views, and then took the tram back down. In all, it has been an amazing experience so far, with plenty more to come!

Mendenhall Glacier from just off the main highway

The salt marsh and beyond from Mt. Roberts

While in Alaska, some of the students are enrolled in a course where they conduct research in the field and lab, and then write a paper based on what they find. My main job as a teaching assistant here in Alaska is to design, organise, and run three of these research projects. I had a lot of fun coming up with the projects by reading various papers and talking with Dr. Bill Stickle, the LSU professor who is in charge of the program here in Alaska. While there isn't enough time to collect publishable data, these projects introduce the students to most basic aspects of conducting ecological research, from getting down and dirty in the field to curating and identifying various organisms, managing data, conducting statistical analyses, and writing up results. Below is a brief outline of each project:

Diversity of Insects Associated with Salt Marsh Plants
The Juneau salt marsh is one of the biggest on the west coast of North America, although it has nothing on the ones on the east coast. Salt marshes generally increase in elevation the further they get away from the ocean and this leads to often obvious zonation of plants. The students sample in 1 m² plots along a gradient from the water's edge to the road which borders the salt marsh, collecting data on soil salinity, moisture, and temperature, the plant species present in each plot (we are preserving specimens for deposition in the LSU herbarium), as well as taking samples of any invertebrates using a sweep net, pitfall traps, and hand collecting. The students will then identify the species present (or at least to family level with the insects), how they are related to one another, the abiotic conditions they tolerate, and how the community changes with elevation in the salt marsh. So far they are having a great time wading around in the marsh, and it has only rained on us a couple of times!

The salt marsh crew

Effects of Marine-Derived Nutrients
Every year, hundreds of thousands of salmon make the journey from the ocean back to Alaskan streams where they hatched. Here, they spawn and then die, their life cycle completed. All these dead salmon and their eggs add a whole lot of nutrients to the water, which also must have an effect on other organisms downstream of the spawning sites. We decided to test this using a simple design: we would sample above the salmon spawning sites (i.e. past a barrier such as a waterfall), within a salmon spawning site, and below the spawning sites (near the mouth of the stream). Data to be collected includes taking water samples to test for nutrient and chlorophyll concentrations, sampling epilithon (the algae and plant material on river stones), and counting the numbers of dead and alive salmon in a 50 m stretch of stream. In one stream sampled so far we estimated there to be over 4500 live salmon in the 50 m stretch. They are so densely abundant you have to watch where you are walking so you don't step on them and you could literally reach into the water and pick them up if you wanted to.

Sheep Creek, one of our amazing field sites

Aquatic Insects as a Food Source for Salmon
The final project the students are working on (and probably my personal favourite) uses the same design and field sites as the marine-derived nutrients project, but the students are examining the effects these nutrients may have on higher trophic levels, in particular the aquatic insects in the streams. Students are sampling aquatic insects using a kick-net and debris bags, and also collecting habitat data such as stream width and depth, number of coarse woody debris, number of deep pools, and amount and type of overhanging vegetation. We have also obtained a permit to trap young fish (hopefully some juvenile salmon) and pump their stomach contents to determine which of the aquatic insects make up the majority of their diet. This will allow us to determine if top-down (the fish predators), bottom-up (nutrients), or environmental (habitat) variables are having a greater effect on insect abundance and diversity. After working at these amazing field sites I wonder why I don't change my PhD to studying aquatic insects in Alaska!

Sampling for aquatic insects

I have a lot more great pictures and a couple of videos from today's adventures which I will post in the next couple of days too!