Snow-filled field adventures...

Hej - finally back to update the blog!
As of today I am pleased to report that field work is complete!  And what an adventure it was!  I spent the last week traveling around Vasterbotten County looking for lodgepole pine, Scots pine, and Norway spruce (apparently the swedes don't call it this - maybe they call it swedish spruce - although I think actually they just call it 'tall' ;)  Most days I had help from Michael so that was much appreciated.  However, on Monday morning I headed out on a solo journey - in a Volvo V50 stationwagon with studded tires no less.  I must say that it is more than a step up from our field rigs at home - heated seats?!  A warning alarm when you are backing up and get too close to something - not that I heard it go off or anything ;)  I think my Mini Cooper may have some competition when I need a bigger vehicle down the road!  Although as you will see below - what it lacks is the clearance of a bigger rig ;)



My dream field car - aside from clearance ;)  There is a local ski hill in the distance - 30 second runs ;)

It turned out the despite the snow usually arriving much later - the snow arrived EARLY - and it didn't magically melt over the weekend like we hoped.  So there I was on my own going down roads that no one else had been down since the snow fell, without cell service, thinking - is this really such a good idea ;)  I generally erred on the side of caution and so I ended up walking some roads that most likely would have been fine driving :)  And I got lots of work done so I was happy.  But Michael decided that at this time of year and given the conditions it might be best if I didn't go alone - so I only had one solo day in the forest :)

Yes that is most definitely a LOT of snow to dig through to collect samples!

Digging through the snow to find the forest floor - brrrr!

Today was the last day in the field - just had two more sites to get done - which seemed like it would be smooth sailing :)  A colleague at Umea, Helena, came with me (she had been on the boreal forest course so I knew her from there too).  The day started out great when we quickly found our first set of stands and collected from the lodgepole and spruce stands - then we could not locate any Scots pine stands of similar age - so we went on a driving adventure down all the side roads and came up empty :(  So then we thought - well we move on to the next site and have better luck there.  We were driving the trusty and luxurious Volvo towards our last site down this road that looked harmless enough when we heard a horrible scraping sound and I quickly stopped the car.  To our dismay when we got out we saw that we were bottomed out/high centered - the snow was covering up what seemed like solid concrete - but was just frozen dirt!  Luckily a couple of Swedish moose hunters came out of the woods - they were talking Swedish so I didn't understand but Helena said they came b/c they heard the horrible sound and said it was a pity we were driving a Volvo and that surely we were in big trouble.  But after only a few pushes the car happily slid back and we got it parked safely.  Swedish adventure!  Alas the last adventure of the day was using our trusty GPS to get to the spot where the lodgepole pine was *supposed* to be only to discover that it was no where to be found - so after about an hour of walking in circles we came up empty handed.  The whole field operation had been going much too smoothly up until today!  But at least I had good company and it was another beautiful snow-filled day out there and we still have 8 sets of stands to work with (10 was the goal).  The up side is that this translates to less samples to be analyzed in the lab so I guess I shouldn't complain ;)
Tomorrow it's time to familiarize myself with life indoors in the lab!  Hej do :)




Helena where the road turned out to be on the 'high' side in the middle - looks harmless right? Not so much!