We have been making a field survey in the vicinity of the town of Whapmagoostui-Kuujjuarapik, Quebec, Canada, from the beginning of July. The region is in the transition zone of the tundra and forests. We are based in the research station of Center for Northern Studies (CEN) in Kuujjuarapik. Basically, we combine a few days stay at the station and 5-7 days camping to investigate at a field. We are running this cycle until early September.
The purpose of this study is to clarify biodiversity of the biological communities in this region, and its relation to the ecosystem functions such as the biomass productivity and the decomposition of soil organic matter. Target biological communities include vascular plants, bacteria and fungi in the soil, and soil mesofauna. At the same time, we investigate indices for ecosystem function such as biomass production, soil organic matter decomposition and so on. As the topics of our survey content wide-ranging, we have to measure many things at the same time.
The field investigation is conducting under various environmental conditions such as the sizzling hot sun, rain shower, 0 oC wind-chill temperature, and huge number of mosquitoes and cleg attacks.
Ryo Kitagawa (Yokohama National University, A member of Theme 6)
A field site
Soil respiration measurement
On the way to investigation for vascular plants, moving quickly to warm ourselves up. There are lots of dwarf Ericaceae and Carex communities in the field.
