Group 1 is officially safe and sound in Fairbanks!
After a three hour plane ride from Boston to Minneapolis, Jackson and I (Thanh) met up with Ellie and Ted in Minneapolis for a short layover. Then we had another six hours of travel before landing in Fairbanks where we had a lovely shuttle driver who introduced the city as a place with lots to see but nothing to do. He also shared many interesting facts about Alaska during the car ride, including that Alaska has over 140 volcanoes, making it the state with the most volcanoes. Once we arrived at our hotel we were able to reunite with our science lead Morgan and begin our eight day quarantine.
We spent the last four days in quarantine sharpening up our science plan and team building. The first day consisted of reviewing the code of conduct, notebook plan and science goals. On the second day, we went through the science plan and learned how to set up a total station. We also practiced taking total station measurements, working with the GPS, and how to write these points down in the field notebooks. Ellie also taught us how to use a throw bag to save someone if they fell into the water. On the third day we continued to practice setting up the total station and took mock total station points for both tundra and water measurements. In addition, Ellie showed us how to use the pack raft.
Today, we started off by doing an activity to identify our leadership styles and how we like to receive feedback so we can all communicate with each other properly. We also attempted to run through a full mock up of stream data collection but ran into a few logistical issues for the order of operations. We still need to come up with a plan to minimize our walking distance in the tundra since our science plan requires us to walk out 150 meters on each side of the stream for every cross section of points.
These few days have been very helpful in catching small miscommunication and tweaking parts of the science plan or data plan to accommodate for that. It was also great hands on practice for using gear. By the end of quarantine we hope be able to confidently conduct our plan in Toolik with optimal efficiency and accuracy.