Post by Bob Booth, Associate Professor at Lehigh University; Steve Jackson, Center Director for the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Southwest Climate Science Center; Connor Nolan, Steve’s PhD Student at University of Arizona, and Melissa Berke, Assistant Professor at University of Notre Dame

Read about Maine Fieldwork Part 1.

Maine Fieldwork Part 2
Our adventures in bog coring, lobster consumption, dehydration, lake scouting, dipteran-slapping, and driving (lots of driving) began on July 6 when Bob Booth, Steve Jackson, Melissa Berke, and Connor Nolan rendezvoused in Portland, Maine, and drove to Bangor, our home base for coring at Caribou Bog. A testate-amoeba record of water-table depth from the bog will be compared to a lake-level record from Giles Pond (cored by Connor and Bryan Shuman back in November). These two sites are the new paleoclimate proxies for our Howland Forest HIPS (Highly Integrated Proxy Site). We also plan to use these records to better understand how lakes and peatlands respond to and record climate variation.

Caribou Bog is a huge (~2200 hectares) ombrotrophic bog that has been the subject of many past investigations. We targeted a part of the bog that had been worked on in the 1980s by Feng Sheng Hu and Ron Davis. Coring took two full days (check out the video below to really appreciate the dipterans and the team’s jumping abilities). On the first day, we surveyed the bog with probe rods to select a coring site. Then we hauled all of the heavy coring gear from the car, down a logging trail into the forest, through the “moat”, and then across the lumpy bog. Every part of the walk from the van to the bog and back was challenging, each for different reasons. The trail was hot and infested with deerflies and mosquitoes, the forest had no trail and low clearance and forced us to wrestle with young trees, the moat provided ample opportunity for losing boots and called for some gymnastic moves while carrying large and heavy stuff, and finally walking the 300 meters across the bog was like being on a demented stairmaster as we sunk a foot or two into the bog with every step.

Portland Head Light

Lobster Feast