{"id":1972,"date":"2018-10-24T10:24:05","date_gmt":"2018-10-24T15:24:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.csr.utexas.edu\/?p=1972"},"modified":"2020-08-31T17:26:38","modified_gmt":"2020-08-31T22:26:38","slug":"mapping-arctic-tundra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/utw10640.utweb.utexas.edu\/wordpress\/mapping-arctic-tundra\/","title":{"rendered":"Mapping Arctic Tundra"},"content":{"rendered":"
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With the threat of dangers such as mosquito swarms and freezing temperatures, Sophy Wu wears special clothing while doing field study work in Alaska. View more photos<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This summer, Sophy Wu, a second-year Ph.D. student studying aerospace engineering, along with Michael O’Connor\u00a0and Stephen Ferencz, two graduate students from Jackson School of Geosciences, conducted fieldwork at the University of Alaska Fairbanks\u2019 Toolik Field Station, a premier research laboratory established in 1976 for studying the Arctic and its relationship to the global environment.<\/p>\n

For two weeks Wu and the team collected soil core samples from both Toolik Lake and the Imnavait Watershed\u2014representative of the older and younger tundra\u2014to measure soil properties, such as porosity, volumetric water content and the active layer thickness.<\/p>\n

\u201cPermafrost soils store twice the amount of carbon found in the atmosphere.\u201d said Wu. \u201cWhen the permafrost thaws, a significant amount of greenhouse gases may be released into the earth\u2019s atmosphere. The field data we collected are essential for understanding the complex feedback between permafrost degradation and a warming climate.\u201d<\/p>\n

This three-year project, funded by NASA and led by Ann Chen<\/a>, an assistant professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, aims to advance NASA\u2019s observation capability from space coupled with on-the-ground validation measurements to understand the hydrologic dynamics in thawing permafrost.<\/p>\n

\u201cRemote sensing is critical as Earth\u2019s arctic region covers continent-sized areas that are mostly inaccessible by foot. Once we establish a link between hydrological properties of arctic tundra soils and Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) satellite measurements, we will be able to extend our analysis over a much broader region in the North Slope of Alaska,\u201d said Chen.<\/p>\n

Wu will return to the Toolik Filed Station for fieldwork over the next two summers. Ann Chen and Bayani Cardenas, a UT professor of geological sciences, will also join the fieldwork team.<\/p>\n

Chen\u2019s\u00a0UT Radar Interferomety<\/a> group, housed in UT\u2019s Center for Space Research, has received additional funding from NASA to advance InSAR technology, which will be used to detect accurate surface deformation for understanding solid Earth dynamics and associated natural hazard risks.<\/p>\n

Source:\u00a0https:\/\/www.ae.utexas.edu\/mapping-arctic-tundra<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This summer, Sophy Wu, a second-year Ph.D. student studying aerospace engineering, along with Michael O’Connor\u00a0and Stephen Ferencz, two graduate students from Jackson School of Geosciences, conducted fieldwork at the University […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1977,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[20],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/utw10640.utweb.utexas.edu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1972"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/utw10640.utweb.utexas.edu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/utw10640.utweb.utexas.edu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utw10640.utweb.utexas.edu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utw10640.utweb.utexas.edu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1972"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/utw10640.utweb.utexas.edu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1972\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2446,"href":"https:\/\/utw10640.utweb.utexas.edu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1972\/revisions\/2446"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utw10640.utweb.utexas.edu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/utw10640.utweb.utexas.edu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utw10640.utweb.utexas.edu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utw10640.utweb.utexas.edu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}