And that’s a wrap!

Mikael and Ellinor arrived back in Gothenburg last week… and with that, the 2022 EDGE lab field season is officially over!

We certainly had our fair share of challenges this summer (returned shipments, sicknesses, too late snowmelt, too early snowmelt, the SAS strike…) but thanks to an incredible team, the season was remarkably successful.

It began with Mikael, Niklas, and Fredrik in Greenland, setting up cameras at the microclimate plots that Signe Normand and the VegDyn group laid out in 2019. I joined that year to help Jonathan measure traits (see some hot-off-the-press results of that work here!), and we’ve since added additional equipment and measurements for Geerte’s phenology project. In 2019 the snow melted early, but not so in 2022, so the team struggled move equipment around in the snow.

Otto and Eline headed to Latnjajaure to maintain the microclimate plots there (later joined by Fredrik) and collect seeds for the transplant experiment. Violetta joined Jonas Lembrechts and the 3D lab to re-survey a MIREN site near Abisko.

A big group headed to Svalbard to set up 80 microclimate plots in Adventdalen, Endalen, Bayfjellnosa and Breinosa. Ellinor, Mariela, Maria, Edith, Mikael, Helena, Stina, Wilhelm, Kata, Judith, and Malin all contributed to the Svalbard work at one point or another, and I finally made it back into the field after a two-year break. We were happy to be joined by Mariana from Team Shrub for a while as well! The SAS strike almost kept some of the team from making it to Svalbard (or home again) but thanks to some “creative” planning we managed to get everyone to where they were supposed to go sooner or later.

Finally, Ellinor and Mikael wrapped up the EDGE lab 2022 field season with an autumn tour of northern Sweden, maintaining and collecting temperature loggers from several sites along a latitudinal gradient.

Now we are home safe and sound and hopefully, if we can manage to figure out Swedish customs, our equipment and samples will be soon too. We will have to wait and see whether the reindeer knock down all our cameras and dig up all our temperature loggers… Next year, we’ll be returning to all three sites to survey, measure, download data, and maintain equipment. Results coming soon(-ish)!

By Anne