Field Notes on Climate Change

Based at the Climate Impacts Research Station, we take you into the field with scientists as they investigate climate change in an Arctic environment. We're with Steph Owens and Danny Lau, sampling copepods, a type of tiny crustacean that lives in the water to measure growth rates in different types of pond to see how they react to an increase in organic matter, which is likely to occur with climate change.Get in touch: Tweet @ArcticCIRC  @emmabrisdion www.arcticirc.net

Based at the Climate Impacts Research Station, this podcast takes you into the field with scientists as they investigate climate change in an Arctic environment. By placing OTCs (open-top chambers resembling a small plexiglass greenhouse with an open-top) over plots of Arctic plant growth, which increase their internal temperature by 1-2oC, we can see what happens to the plant communities when experiencing warmer seasons. Get in touch: Tweet @ArcticCIRC @emmabrisdion www.arcticirc.net

In this episode, we're heading out into the Arctic tundra. Here researchers are investigating the increasing release of stored carbon from Arctic soils into the atmosphere. In an Arctic tundra ecosystem, peat and permafrost store more carbon than trees and vegetation. With climate change, permafrost is melting and trees are growing faster and further into the carbon-heavy peat regions in the tundra. As trees drop leaves and add organic matter to the soil, the soil composition changes from peat to

‘Our mountains are shrinking!’ shout headlines referring to summits and climate change, while that’s not literally true, our mountains are staying pretty much the same shape and size, it’s the alpine region, the coldest part of the mountain top, that’s shrinking thanks to climate change. What’s happening to the plant communities that live on these summits, is of great interest to plant ecologists. Are warmer–adapted species able to move up the slope? Will they compete with our summit species? Are we

Did you know that lakes 'burp' methane? In this episode we head to Stordalen, one of the world’s most important permafrost and thaw pond sites, to find out how lakes and melting permafrost pools are emitting greenhouse gasses. With global warming causing more permafrost to thaw, carbon previously locked away in frozen soils becomes available to the organisms in the environment and can be released as greenhouse gasses. First we’re looking at dissolved carbon dioxide and methane transfer into the air

This week we’re heading up Mount Nuolja in Abisko, Sweden, armed with insect nets and measuring pots to catch and record different Arctic bumblebees. Emma joins Ryan and Lottie from Imperial College London, as they set off to investigate the plant-pollinator relationships that characterise the lives of the 15 bumblebee species that live here in the Arctic. By understanding more about how the different bumblebees interact with the different flowering plants up the side of the mountain and through the

Based at theAbisko Scientific Research Station, this podcast takes you into the field with scientists as they investigate climate change in an Arctic environment. In this episode, join the team observing plant development throughout the seasons along a transect that stretches from the top to the bottom of Mount Nuolja. Swedish Botanist, Thore Fries, collected the same data 100 years ago in the same spot, so we can compare the information we gather today to that from the landscape a century ago. This