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A benefit of being a researcher is that you visit a lot of different places by attending conferences or doing research. The drawback, especially as a postdoc, is that you constantly have to apply for funding and move a lot. For now at least, I’ve secured funding for a while leaving me time to focus on my research full time.

One of the project I’ll be involved in is looking at food web ecology in the Catalan Pyrenees. The sampling probably won’t begin before 2011 but that didn’t stop me from attending a workshop in October on mountain ecology and climate change in Obergurgl, Austria. The most fascinating part was walking along a glacial moraine where a glacier has retreated with record pace the last few decades. I also went to the Catalan Pyrenees to seek out some potential field sites and to assist with retrieving data from thermostats in mountain lakes. A lot of the lakes were already frozen so at times we had to jump in a look for them.

Obergurgl in Austria

Obergurgl in Austria

Walking along the the Rotmoos moraine, Austria

Searching for thermostats. Engorgs-Malniu, Catalonia.

Alex is fetching a thermostat. Romedo, Catalonia

Mountain lake in Colomèrs, Catalonia

Walking in Romedo, Catalonia

Vall Ferrera, Catalonia

One of my favorite locations in Romedo, Catalonia

Since I broke off my stay at UC Santa Cruz have been a guest researcher at “Leibniz-Laboratory for Radiometric Dating and Stable Isotope Research”. Yiming & I are so fortunate to live in an apartment less than 2 km from the lab and usually I prefer walking there. Although Kiel is considered a dull and uninspiring town in terms of its architecture (80% of the old town was destroyed during the last war) it has many green areas with beautiful trees that I happen to pass through on my way to work.

I have not yet made much progress on my ongoing projects  partially because I’m waiting for new funding and partially because I’m getting trained in operating instruments in the lab. Right now I’m helping Yiming measuring hydrogen isotopes in plant waxes extracted from ocean sediment cores. Climate researcher are working non-stop these days to acquire such data because are informative of precipitation records in the past and how terrestrial plant communities have changed. This can lead us to a better understanding of the changes in temperatures and weather patterns we’re experiencing.

We live on this street

Farmer's market on Blücherplatz - next to where we live

Kiel's old water tower has kind of a Bismarck inspired style to it

Students from the nearby vocational training school in the background

Fall is here

The lab has the long and rather cumbersome name "Leibniz-Laboratory for Radiometric Dating and Stable Isotope Research"

The International Polar Year (IPY) is a campaign of internationally coordinated research to gain new knowledge about Earth’s polar regions, how those regions are changing, and how such changes are impacting the health of our biosphere. I am quite excited that I arrived at Universtiy of Alaska just when the Polar Year took off. Of the 208 clusters of projects endorsed by IPY, 55 have participation from Universtiy of Alaska.