Over the last week, I've picked up a few skills I didn't expect to learn while out studying water flow paths in the Arctic. I've spent much of my time constructing platforms for solar panels that power the electronic instruments we are deploying at our six field sites, as well as wiring and programming the electronics themselves. Here are some of the steps involved:
 |
Hauling scrap wood from the burn pile by the bonfire area.
Here, you can also see Toolik Lake still frozen, but the hillsides in the background are beginning to melt. |
 |
| I learned to use a circular saw AND a table saw. |
 |
| For my side of the project, the dataloggers (see four pictures down) are part of a thermocouple system, in which signals are sent down one wire to a temperature sensor, then come up a second wire with different material properties. The signal is recorded by the datalogger and relates to temperature. We have sensors at incremental depths underground in three wells, one inside the water track, one on the water track edge, and one outside the water track, at each of our six sites. In this way, we can monitor how the temperature changes as the permafrost melt depth increases over the summer, and then freezes into the winter, re-thaws in the summer, etc. |
 |
| I drilled a hole through a cooler to pull the wires that connect to the wells through. The cooler houses the datalogger instrumentation and the battery, protecting them from snow and rain. |
 |
| I had to strip all thirty wire pairs. The wire is similar to thermostat wire. |
 |
| Here's what I looked like for three hours. |
 |
| Then I connected all the wires to the dataloggers. |
 |
| Finally I hooked up the battery and the solar panel that will power it except through the sunless winter. Hopefully it is working and recording data! I'll go back and check soon. |
