Seida field cabinDespite the long and cold winter in the tundra, soil microbes are not having a winter holiday, which means some field work for flux researchers as well. We wanted to find out what is going on under the snow cover, and headed up north to measure greenhouse gas emissions at the tundra flux site. There were three of us on this one-week field trip in January 2008: Irina Samarina and Igor Maruschjak from Komi Science Centre, Syktyvkar and Maija Repo from University of Kuopio.

We woke up before dawn in Seida village to get the most out of the arctic winter day, which lasts about eight hours at this time of year. In winter some things are easier up north: the snowmobile ride to our site was much faster than going by off-road vehicle in the summer, it was easy to move around on the hard snow surface with skis and snow shoes, and - above all - fieldwork was completely mosquito-free this time. The little green wagon, our field cabin, provided us shelter in the field conditions and was cosier than ever.

Winter sunSnow had smoothed the landscape at our study site: there were thick snow packs in depressions and river valleys, while winds had kept the top of the peat plateau almost bare. We measured the fluxes at our permanent measuring sites with the snow gradient method by sampling gas at different depths of the snow pack. The weather was ideal for field work: day-time temperatures of -10°C, light winds, and even sunshine. Although the winter has not been the coldest one in Seida, the air temperature had dropped down to -45 °C at the end of December. This made us even more thankful for having such good luck with weather during this field trip!

After we had completed the gas measurements and taken water samples from the two tundra rivers we even had some spare time for joyful winter sports in real winter weather before the next train to St. Petersburg.