We are a group of freshwater ecologists from the Biology Department at St. Catherine University in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Our research takes us to Iceland and other arctic regions where we are working to understand how temperature influences nitrogen fixation rates and metabolism in cyanobacterial assemblages. Nitrogen fixation is extremely sensitive to temperature and therefore nitrogen gas from the atmosphere may become more accessible to freshwater ecosystems as the climate warms. We are working to understand the potential ecological and environmental implications of changes in cyanobacteria species composition and nitrogen fixation rates in arctic lakes and streams.

Saturday, June 11, 2016

Summer 2016 Field Season Begins


Annette and Liesa working on our chamber design -
 making some improvements to the engineering.
Yes, the summer field season in Iceland is off to a great start!  We have hit the ground running this year and the weather has been so nice that we have been out in the field getting our first set of measurements underway.  As a result, we have been slow to get blogging.  Our St. Kate's students, Liesa and Annette, have been working closely with our colleagues from Montana State University and the University of Alabama on some of our big team sampling efforts and learning a great deal about the streams they had heard so much about, but hadn't seen first hand yet.  They have also been spending time in the lab working on the design for the chambers which we will use to make many of our measurements this summer.  I will let them write about how their experience compares with their initial expectations and fill you in on their early project development.  

 Of course, while the weather has been unbelievable, we have still encountered much rain and some days have been very cold and soggy.  But, we are in high spirits and we have such a great group of people to work with.  So, we are off to a strong start and very excited to see what new knowledge emerges from our work this season.  This year we are studying the interaction between temperature and phosphorus fertilization - and how these two factors can interact to affect how stream ecosystems function.  Understanding how both warming and nutrient addition can affect stream food webs and the way that ecosystems process and cycle nutrients is important in our efforts to predict how freshwaters will respond to both current and future environmental change.  So, stay tuned for updates from our team and more about our results as the summer progresses.  We have a very busy weekend coming up with a full day of water chemistry sampling on Saturday, followed by bug, organic matter, and algal sampling on Sunday.  Then, we are hoping for a bit of a break to catch our breath and maybe write a blog! In the meantime, we have many new photos in the slideshow, which capture some of our nice weather and initial days here together this summer.

Delor, Nate, Liesa, and Annette working on the channel experiment.
Weather isn't too bad....
Okay, maybe the black flies are bad...
With little wind, the black flies can be quite bothersome!
They are good at finding your eyes and ears.  



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